Well…fuck.
“Dude, I had no idea what I was bringing onto your doorstep,” Julian said immediately.
Ashleigh had already scampered off to get a drink. While the rest of us just stood there, cringing.
“It’s fine,” I lied.
I’d never heard of this Chase guy before in my life. He’d waltzed in and swept Annie off of her feet, literally. I was as equally confused as I was pissed off. She’d barely given me a glance before walking out of the house with him. As if that had always been her expectation.
“Maybe you should go after her,” Julian said.
I shook my head. There was no way that I was going to run after her. I was pissed off, and then if I followed, she would be pissed off. We weren’t quite on steady footing yet. This was only a maybe date since neither of us had confirmed it either way. There was still a blurry line in the sand, and barging out of here and confronting her would draw it more firmly.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I said.
Sutton agreed, “Yeah, probably for the best.”
“But who is he to Annie?” Julian asked, trying his best to look out for me. “I just thought he was Ashleigh’s brother. I didn’t know anything else.”
“He is Ashleigh’s brother,” Sutton said. “Chase and Annie grew up together. They’ve been friends, I don’t know, longer than us.”
“Friends,” Julian said dubiously.
Sutton looked away but not before I saw the wince on her face.
“Sutton,” I said softly.
She shrugged. “Look, I don’t think I should be the one talking to you about this.”
“What’s there to talk about?”
“Nothing.”
Ashleigh sauntered back in with some clear beverage and looked between the three of us. “What are y’all standing around for?”
“We’re discussing your brother,” Julian said. He pulled her closer.
I still couldn’t figure out what he saw in her, but Julian liked to be charmed as much as he charmed others.
“What about him?”
“His history with Annie.”
Ashleigh sighed in that dreamy sort of way as she looked up and clutched her hands around her drink and brought it to her chest. She looked like a Disney character. “They’re destiny.”
I squeezed the beer I was holding and looked at her incredulously. “What does that mean?”
“Ashleigh,” Sutton warned.
“Well, they’re going to get married,” she said as if it were obvious. “They have a pact that if they’re not married to someone else by the time they’re thirty then they’ll get married. Now, he’s moving home. They’re fated.”
I blinked. Was she serious? This was the sort of thing that people talked about in movies, but it wasn’t reality. People didn’t actually make those promises. Who wanted to marry someone they’d known at eighteen anyway? You’d both change beyond comprehension.
“It’s not like that,” Sutton said quickly. But her eyes said it was like that. “They’re just friends.”
Ashleigh rolled her eyes and took a sip of her drink. “Whatever, Sutton. You just don’t believe in true love.” Then she stepped around her and walked off.
Sutton staggered back a step at the comment. She looked like a wounded bird. She closed her eyes briefly around the pain of what Ashleigh had said. I actually stepped forward to catch her in case she fainted.
“Are you all right?” I asked.
Sutton clenched her jaw and opened her eyes. “Fine. And I do believe in true love. In fact, I believe that if you’re lucky, it can happen more than once,” she said defensively as her eyes flitted to David across the room. “I wouldn’t listen to Ashleigh’s ramblings. Annie and Chase dated. They broke up. They made this silly pact because he was moving across the country and likely never coming home. It’s nothing more than that.”
Then she nodded at us both and returned to David’s side. He pulled her in close and kissed the top of her head. Ashleigh’s comment had been callous. I disliked her even more for it.
“Seriously, I didn’t mean—” Julian began.
I interrupted him and waved it away, “Let’s forget it. You didn’t know who he was to Annie.” I glared at the door. “Nor did I, apparently. But there’s nothing I can do about it until she gets back.”
“You sure you don’t want to go after her?”
“Positive,” I told him.
I clapped a hand on his shoulder and directed him to the living room.
A Super Bowl party game had been set up. Everyone dropped in twenty dollars to pick three tickets. Every twenty dollars got you more tickets. Each ticket had a phrase on it, such as, This ticket wins if the national anthem is longer than two minutes. Then a raffle would be held at the end of the game for all the winning tickets, and the names drawn would win some of the pot money.
I blindly dropped down two hundred dollars for tickets. I’d been warned about the game and planned to buy enough for both Annie and me to play. But right now, I needed the distraction of sorting through the tickets, so I wouldn’t think about her absence.
I won the national anthem ticket and dropped it into the collection bin that Jensen held out. He stood next to me as the game got geared up.
“Who are you rooting for?” I asked absentmindedly.
Jensen didn’t answer. He just gave me a look. “You know, I always admired your work ethic and your complete hold on control at the office, even when things didn’t go your way. But I don’t know how you’re standing here right now.”
I met his gaze. My cousin and the only person who had ever felt like an older brother to me. “You’re right.”
I passed him my beer and left.
Annie still wasn’t back. It had been long enough. She wasn’t going to like me stepping in, but she was going to have to deal with that. I tried to tamp down on the anger. I didn’t want to blow up on her and lose all the ground that we’d gained. But it was hard to temper my rising fears and redirect them to something manageable.
I wrenched open the front door, prepared to head out into the darkened exterior and find Annie. But before I took the first step out, Annie stumbled forward, her hand on the doorknob.
“Oh,” she gasped with a laugh. Her eyes lifted to mine. “Jordan, hey!”
“Sorry,” I said automatically. “I didn’t know you were there.”
Obviously.
“No problem,” she said, straightening. “It got dark really fast. We didn’t realize how late it was.”
I stepped back to let her inside.
Chase followed behind her. He shot me a smug smirk. “You must be the boyfriend.”
The boyfriend? The boyfriend? Was I the boyfriend? Had she told him that? Or was he fucking with me? From the look on his face, I was a hundred percent certain that he was fucking with me.
“Be nice,” Annie said with another carefree laugh. “Jordan, this is Chase. Chase, Jordan.”
I closed the door behind them and turned to face Chase Sinclair. He held his hand out, and I put mine in his. We both squeezed harder than necessary. Until my hand was cramping and I could see the wince in his eyes before he abruptly let go. I tried not to look self-satisfied, but I’d clearly failed because Annie sighed in frustration.
“Chase and I grew up together,” Annie explained. “He’s in town to buying a house.”
“You’re moving here?” I asked, sizing him up.
He was such a fucking pretty boy. I couldn’t believe that Annie had ever been into this guy. She didn’t seem the type to want a guy who spent more time getting ready than she did. I was being petty and didn’t fucking care.
“Yeah. Next week,” Chase said smoothly. “We’ll be seeing a lot more of each other.”
I could hear the threat in his voice and wanted to punch him in the face. I clenched my hands into fists. Tried to remember all the reasons not to deck this guy as he’d all but said he was gunning for Annie.
“Jordan, let’s go get a drink,” Annie said. She stepped between us, putting her hand on my arm, as if she could tell that I was about to blow my top. She smiled at Chase. “Need anything? We can get it.”
“I’m good,” Chase said and then left for the living room.
Annie dragged me into the kitchen and away from the rest of the party. Thankfully, the kitchen had cleared out. The game was about to start, and everyone wanted to watch kickoff. I had a ticket for how far kickoff went, but I couldn’t seem to care.
“All right,” she said, opening the fridge and looking through the choices. “What are you drinking? Shiner Bock? I don’t know if I’m up for beer.”
“Annie,” I said carefully.
She pulled out a wine cooler with a shrug and then smiled up at me. “You look mad,” she said, deflating.
“I’m not mad.” Yes, I was. “I’m trying to figure out what happened.”
“Chase is a really old friend.”
“Ashleigh mentioned a pact?”
She sighed. “Ashleigh should mind her own business.”
“Is she wrong?”
“No,” Annie said as she popped the top on her drink. “But Chase and I aren’t like that anymore. We’re just friends.”
“We’ve been telling everyone that we’re just friends, too, Annie.”
She cringed. “That’s not what I meant. We dated in high school. That pact was just…” She trailed off and waved her hand. “Anyway, he only wanted to talk because he’s dating someone serious. He wanted to tell me in person and show me the ring.”
I released a breath, unclenching my hands. “You could have led with that.”
She laughed and leaned into me. “And miss watching you sweat?”
“Cruel and unusual punishment, love.”
“Even if he wasn’t, you don’t have anything to worry about, Jordan. Didn’t you hear what he said when he came in?”
“What was that?”
“That you’re my…boyfriend,” she said the last word softly, looking down.
I paused. “I thought he was fucking with me.”
She met my gaze. “He wasn’t.”
“Am I…your boyfriend?”
She bit her lip. “Do you want to be?”
“I don’t want to be if you’re only doing it because your ex showed up.”
“That’s not why,” she said in exasperation.
“You drew the line in the sand.”
“And I’m the one crossing it,” she said and then pressed her lips to mine.
I pulled her tight against me. She tasted like home, and I didn’t want to fucking let her go. If seeing her ex was the way that she’d realized we were finally dating, I guessed I’d take that.
My hand slipped lower to the hem of her skirt and then ran up her leg. I pressed her back into the kitchen counter. She made a breathy sound of protest but kept kissing me. I wanted to go further, heft her up onto the granite countertop, hike her skirt up, and take her right here.
Just as I considered how to do that fast enough so we wouldn’t be interrupted, a throat cleared behind us. We pulled apart, and I found Emery standing in the entrance.
“The game started,” she said with a gleam in her eye.
“Thanks,” Annie said breathlessly. “We’ll be right there.”
Emery nodded, grabbing a water out of the fridge and disappearing again.
Annie tilted her head back and laughed. “Whoops.”
“I have no regrets.”
“Me either,” she said, pressing a kiss to my lips again. “But we should probably go.”
“Yeah, I need to see if I won any of these.” I dug the tickets out of my pocket.
Annie laughed and grabbed a few of them, reading them to herself. “Oh, perfect! I want the jackpot!”
I grinned at her as she headed back toward the living room. But then I snagged her before she walked through the doorway.
“What?” she asked, looking up from the tickets.
“If I’m your boyfriend now,” I said carefully, “can I make a request of you?”
She arched an eyebrow. “What do you have in mind?”
“I want to go to Seattle with you.”
She startled. “For my interview?”
“Yeah. A lot of my friends live in Seattle, and I haven’t seen most of them in a few years. Plus, I wouldn’t mind getting away with my girl.”
She melted. “With your girl?”
“Yeah. What do you think? We could go early and see the city.”
“Well, I already have my ticket and room. I don’t think that I could get it moved,” she said, worry coming to her voice.
“Why don’t you let me take care of all of that?”
She narrowed her eyes. “Why does that concern me?”
“Come on. You’ve always wanted to see Seattle. Let me show you.”
She wavered for a second before nodding. “I’d love that.”