Page 33 of Beautiful Crazy

He tilts his head, folding his arms across his chest. “Says the guy who shared a bed with Emily last night.”

“Wait, what?” Asher’s mouth falls open and even Beckham turns toward the conversation.

Elias leans over to my older brother and asks, “Who’s Emily again?”

“She’s his best friend and roommate of several years now,” he answers.

“Uh huh.” Graham nods. “He may say he’s single, but you can’t fool anyone, bro. Your heart is spoken for.”

Feeling hot all of a sudden, I unbutton my jacket and pull it off, hanging it back on its hanger. “I take it you ran into Emily.”

“And Lacey and Hadley.” Graham smirks and finds his gray suit hanging on the rack. “I walked right into a conversation about you and Emily sharing a bed and you being her fake boyfriend for the night. You want to tell us about that?”

“Not particularly.”

Beckham steps up next to me in his suit, looking at himself and me in the mirror. “I bet that was a boner from hell.”

Memories of what it felt like to be next to Emily last night, smelling her hair, holding her hand, having her on my lap, and nearly kissing her enter my mind, but I push them away just as fast. “You have no idea.”

“Actually, I do. Remember the fight I had with Hadley in the bakery office?”

“Yeah.”

He chuckles. “Let’s just say that was followed up by a very long and ridiculously cold shower.”

“Dude, why haven’t you just told her how you feel?” Asher asks.

“I’m trying. I am. I swear.” I shake my head not knowing how to explain my fears. “I get the nerve to finally say something and then-”

“You chicken out.”

“Or she does something that makes me second guess everything. Like last night.” I turn away from the mirror and face my brothers and Elias who are all watching me now. “There we were sharing a bed because the roads were bad, and we chose to stay. And it’s not like we haven’t shared a bed before. She’s fallen asleep lying next to me loads of times. I’m the one she comes home to after a bad date. I’m the one who calms her down when she’s having a bad day. Last night just…felt different. I let her wear my t-shirt since neither of us had anything packed and with just my shirt on…Jesus, she looked so fucking good and…”

Graham puts his hands on his hips. “So, what happened then?”

“We were closer than we usually are because her bed was a fucking full-size bed and not a king like mine, and she smelled so good and she looked perfect and I finally grew my balls big enough to kiss her and then just as I was about to, she rolled over and went to sleep.”

“Damn.” Graham frowns.

“Yeah. Tell me about it. I had to lay there and wait for my dick to get the message so I could fall asleep and even then, it took forever to not lie there wondering where I went wrong…again.”

“Again?” Asher asks. “What does that mean?”

Elias pipes in. “You tried to kiss her another time?”

“No, Ididkiss her another time.” All the eyebrows in the room rise like a choir in a choir loft.

Beckham speaks first. “You kissed Emily?”

“Mmm hmm.”

Graham speaks next. “Like a for real kiss?”

“Yep.”

And then there’s Asher. “Did you use tongue?”

“What kind of stupid question is that? Of course, I did.”

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