Page 143 of Drop Three

I gulp. “What do you mean?”

“I’ve seen how cruel people have been tonight. Gus saw what happened with Jared and told me Bodhi put him in his place. I need to remember to thank him for that later.”

“Yeah, well, Jared had it coming for him.”

Cal nods, spinning me in a fluid motion before bringing me back to him.

“So tell me, what’s with the dress?” He holds up his hands in surrender. “Hey, no judgment, but this is the least Navy dress I’ve ever seen—the whole outfit, really.”

I smack his arm playfully. “I was…gifted a dress. I just didn’t want to wear it.”

Cal’s brows raise in question. “From who? Bodhi?”

I nod, and Cal responds, “No shit. Who knew he had it in him?”

“Not me. But I refused to wear it just to spite him. It worked.” I laugh.

“He’s changed, Navy.” He says it without hesitation, like it’s the truest thing.It is.

Bodhi has changed.

“He’s in therapy,” I tell Cal, thinking he already knows.

Cal stops in the middle of our dance. “What? Since when?”

I think back in time. “I don’t know. Since before I moved in, I guess. He told me randomly one day, but I don’t think he knows I heard it or remember. We haven’t talked about it since.”

“Shit. We talked about it, but I had no idea he had found someone. I’m so fucking proud of him,” Cal says with pride, rubbing the scruff of his beard and turning to steal a glance at Bodhi dancing with an older woman.

“He’s dancing with Mikey’s mom,” Cal says, turning back to face me.

I smile, my sights still on Bodhi across the room, watching as he laughs with the sixty-year-old woman having the time of her life.

“You love him, don’t you?”

“What?” I answer in a daze.

“You heard me,” Cal says.

“It depends.”

“Depends on what?”

I smile, finally looking at my brother. “He only gets Navy, the friend, until he decides to be a man and tell me how he really feels.”

I love him.

Yet, waiting on him feels like forever, and I’m due for some affirmations and dirty fucking. In that order.

Kodi dances up to us, shaking her hips and grinning from ear to ear. “I haven’t had this much fun in years,” she says.

Cal wraps his arm around her. “Me either, angel.”

Letting Cal’s words sink in, I leave the happy couple and make my way over to the rest of our friends with plans to dance the night away.

Bodhi’s lively smile calls me to him as I get lost in the mix of salsa dancing and Gus’s club grinding.

Bodhi pulls me toward him and leans forward, whispering, “Next time you plan to cause chaos by choice, you call me, and we do it together. Deal?”

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