Page 91 of Friend Zone to End Zone

“…happy birthday to you,”we finished singing. As the twins’ older siblings assisted them in blowing out their birthday candles, Cole slipped his arm behind my waist and whispered, “This reminds me of the day I fell in love with you, did you know that?”

I loved that even now after all these years together, this man could still send tingles down my spine with a few words.

“You fell in love with me the first day we met?” I raised my eyebrow, challenging him.

He shrugged. “Well, yeah. I mean, once I saw you and realized you weren’t a slightly less masculine version of your brother, it was all over for me.”

“You really thought I was going to have a female mustache, didn’t you?” I chuckled, remembering back to what he’d told me about his initial imaginings of what he’d assumed I’d look like.

A guilty expression formed on his face. “Maybe…” He raised the hand that wasn’t currently supporting our daughter’s weight. “In my defense though, Vincent did say you looked a lot like him.”

“Well, I guess if we take nothing else from that, we can at least be reassured that you didn’t just like me because you thought Vincent was cute and you had to settle for second best since he was already married when you met.”

Cole’s jaw dropped. “Did you really just go there?”

“Oh, I so did.” I smiled sweetly up at him, loving that even after all these years together we still teased each other to no end. And then just for fun, I added, “I mean, Hannah did have her whole theory about why you never went on dates. So that does kind of go along with it.”

He shook his head. “You know very well how far off she was with that theory though, right?”

“I don’t know, I forget…”

“Well,” he said in a deep voice that immediately sent butterflies to my stomach. “If you’re having a hard time remembering just how attracted I am to you, especially when you’re pregnant with my child and I’m holding our other one, maybe I’ll just have to refresh your memory when we get home.”

And because I could never resist him when he talked to me like that, I said, “If you get Malia to bed, you can refresh my memory all you want.”

His eyes got the fiery look in them that still made me go weak in the knees. “Maybe we should skip the cake and ice cream and get out of here.”

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