Page 40 of No First Kisses

Hesitantly, he finally reaches out, and I take his hand with a huge smile on my face.

“This. Right here. This is his ass.” Then I watch as the tension leaves Kevin’s body and awe fills his face. “I told you. Soda makes him go crazy. It’s hilarious.”

For a long few seconds, everything is right in the world. Logan has his arm wrapped around my shoulders, and one of his best friends gets to escape the craziness and the nightmares that I can see are still haunting him, if the dark shadows under his eyes are anything to go by.

When the baby starts to settle down, I let go of Kevin’s hand. He leaves it, surprising not only me, but Logan as well.

“I love you, Poppy,” he whispers against the side of my head. “Thank you for doing that. He needed it.”

“I know.” I smile even wider when Vi comes up to our table with a pizza in her hands.

“I went ahead and put this in for you as soon as I got your drinks. I figured you’d want to get started while I put the rest of the food order in.”

Eyes wide, I stare up at her while blindly reaching for the food in front of me. “I love you, Vi. If it wasn’t really weird, I’d ask you to have my babies.”

Vi laughs, waving me off. “No, thanks. I’ve got enough on my plate without worrying about a baby. Y’all are crazy, all of you having kids at the same time.”

“You’re telling me.” Logan shakes his head. “I don’t even want to know what’s going to happen when the office has to find coverage for all of us when we go on paternity leave at the same time.” He looks over at Josh. “You might get stuck with the troopers covering the city, too.”

“Not me.” Josh laughs. “My last shift is this weekend. I’m going full-time with BFD after I take a vacation week to go fishing with my brother.” His face goes dark for a second. “You know, to get his mind off the fact that his ex-wife just got sentenced to life in prison for attempted murder.”

“Bitch wrecked my baby,” Kevin mutters darkly. “She deserves it.”

I can’t help the merciless laugh that leaves my lips. “What kind of car was it again, Kevin? Like a Toyota or something, right? Something annoying and feminine?”

He glares at me, but it does nothing to stop the smile on my face as I give him shit about the car that his sister was in when she got in a car accident with a psycho.

“It was a mint condition and fully restored 1965 Mustang, in midnight blue. Do you know how much it’s gonna cost me to have it rebuilt?”

“All that money that you got paid for being a prisoner of war?” I bat my eyelashes at him playfully, ignoring the sharp intake of breath that every single person at the table takes at my words.

Kevin, surprising everyone at the table, smiles and starts to laugh. “Great god above, girl. You always knew how to tear the Band-Aid off. What, did you and Chloe take lessons together in being a badass?”

Doing something that is a really bad idea, I pull him into a hug. An awkward hug, since Logan is still partially wrapped around my shoulders and I have a huge belly bump. But a hug all the same.

“Did you know,” I tell him quietly when he tenses up under my touch before forcing himself to relax, “that my brother and father miss you too? Dad said something about you spending time at the club before your last deployment. Maybe you should go see them. They might be able to help you get through it.”

Kevin nods, and when he hugs me back, I have to fight back the tears.

But I fail.

He lets me go, looking at me like he broke me.

“What’s wrong with your woman?” He looks over my head at Logan. “I didn’t hurt her, did I? I swear I didn’t mean to do whatever it was.”

“No, man.” Logan clears his throat. “You just… haven’t been yourself since you’ve been home. And you gave her a glimpse of what she misses about you, too. Plus, she’s pregnant and likes to cry at the drop of a hat right now.”

The stark honesty in Logan’s words has the tears pouring down my cheeks. But the smell of the pizza is too delicious to ignore. So I sit there crying while I stuff my face with pizza and wait for the guys to order their food.

“You know.” Logan wipes the tears from my cheeks between bites. “I really do love you. More than anything I’ve ever thought possible. Not only for what you do to me. But for the love that you have for my friends.”

“I know,” I tell him while still crying. “It’s why I didn’t put better locks on my doors.”

Logan picks up the hand that doesn’t currently have a slice of pizza in it, and he kisses my wrist while everyone else around the table laughs at what they think is a joke about my locks.

“Poppy.” He gives me a half smile. “There’s literally no door or lock in the world that can keep me away from you.”

“That’s cute,” Josh interrupts. “In a really stalkerish way.”

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