Page 118 of Begin Again Again

Beth folded her arms across her chest. “How much of a dickhead were you being?”

“About an eight out of ten.”

Beth rolled her eyes.

Byron’s smile was replaced by a hundred-yard stare. “I’ve never had someone do that before after a fight…”

“What, leave you alone?”

His gaze locked on hers. “Yeah. Everything always escalated before. Got worse. You didn’t let it get like that.”

“Because I’m a grown up.” She took his hand. “Byron, I don’t want to say this to you. I don’t like ultimatums, but I don’t want to keep playing games. I can’t.”

He nodded, boy-scout earnest. “I get that. Do you want to go out? Like, properly?”

“Are you serious?”

“One hundred percent. I want us to be together.”

He said it so easily, Beth found herself scouring his sentence for caveats. Together as friends? Together as fuck buddies? Together as—

“I mean it. I want it to be us. I spent ages figuring out how to get you back.”

Beth glanced at him. “What?”

“I knew the day after you left that I’d cocked up. I wanted to see you and make things right; I just didn’t know what to say.”

“So, you waited another fourteen days and sent me a picture of your dick?”

He burst out laughing. “Yeah, it got a bit slap-dash toward the end. But I didn’t want to fuck up your Christmas!”

Beth laughed. “Yeah, you were at no risk of that.”

“So, we had equally shit Christmases?”

She let go of his hand. “We can compare Christmas horror shows in a bit, I’m still stuck on this ‘wanting to get back in contact’ thing.”

Byron’s gaze lingered on her mouth. “Okay… but you should know that my focus is being severely tested by your nudity.”

“Fine. So you knew you wanted to make up two weeks ago. Why did you message tonight?”

He shrugged. “Seemed like the right time.”

“White guy confidence.” Beth shook her head. “I’d kill for an eye dropper full of white guy confidence.”

“I know where you can get some…”

She punched Byron in his rock-wall of a stomach “You’re fucking disgusting!”

He laughed, so she punched him again. He grabbed her wrists and pinned her hands to her sides.

“Release me!” she demanded.

“Or what if I do this instead?” Byron pressed his face between her boobs and motorboated her until she kneed him in the thigh. He pulled away, rubbing his leg. “You don’t surrender! It’d be much easier if you surrendered!”

“Never!”

Byron kissed her forehead. “Okay, never surrender, Horoscopes. That’s fine.”

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