Page 13 of Chocolate Cherry Cabin

“You know,” Cassandra said, “the man might have a point about the family thing. Thereismore to life than simply raising our sweet little hellions.”

“There are also several good reasons why Louis is still single,” Hannah stated, locking her hands around her cup. His personality being the big one.

“But he’s hot,” Cass said, sighing wistfully.

“And he’s smart.” Athena lifted a brow. “Accomplished. Does he read? I’ve always been a sucker for a reader.”

“He’s bossy,” Hannah countered. “He thinks he has the right to dictate what I do with my life.”

“Just like Calvin,” her cousin muttered.

“Wediscussthings,” Hannah argued. Calvin had a say in her life, but he didn’t run the entire show.

“I never saw that bossy side of Louis,” Athena mused. “I only saw the two of you flirting—sorry, verbally attacking each other—around town.”

“Has he really made you feel less than worthy?” Cassandra asked, tipping her head to the side and sending her curls into a tangle.

“Well...” Hannah fumbled for something concrete to support her claims. “He...” He’d been nothing short of awesome with Thomas the other day.

But she knew what he was like, deep down. She knew what his judgment felt like, and that if she waited long enough it would pop up and blindside her.

“He carried Mom inside when she fainted,” Thomas called from the hall outside his room, “and he fixed my nosebleed.”

The little eavesdropper. Seriously. Heat was already creeping up Hannah’s face as she tried to figure out how to explain the incident, while her friends gaped at her.

“It wasn’t like that,” she said numbly.

“You were holding out on us?” Cassandra shot her an unimpressed look.

“It’s the quiet ones,” Athena said knowingly. She had leaned back, legs crossed, her coffee mug secured between her elegant hands.

“He didn’tcarryme.”

“Wait,” Athena added. “Do you still have that thing about blood?”

“What thing?” Cassandra asked.

“I tend to get woozy when I see blood, even though everything’s totally fine.” Hannah closed her eyes, trying to erase the image of Thomas’s nose and mittens.

“It’s why she didn’t become a doctor,” Athena stated.

Hannah’s eyes flew open. “You know about that?”

She shrugged. “I figured it out a few years ago. At first I thought dissecting the frog was an isolated incident. Because you were still totally fascinated and jumped right back into science—as long as you didn’t have to dissect anything.” She turned to Cass. “Louis caught her when she fainted in class.”

“No!” Cassandra breathed.

“I thought she was finally going to see Louis’s attention for what it really was, and date him instead of Calvin.”

“Wh-what?” Hannah sputtered. “I donotlike Louis Bellmore. I haveneverliked him. And—and he never…” He had caught her, though. Like a hero. An annoying hero who wasn’t supposed to have even noticed her during the worst moment of her life.

“So he had to carry you yesterday?” Cassandra asked, leaning forward, a fist tucked under her chin. “Like, to your room?” Her grin was almost evil.

“I just leaned on him, and then he put a wet cloth on the back of my neck and gave me a candy to bring my blood sugar back up.” She began talking faster, worried they’d think the situation had actually meant something. Which it hadn’t. But it felt like it could if she wasn’t careful. “And he ran all of Thomas’s things through the wash after getting him cleaned up.”

Realizing she was twisting a tendril of hair around her finger, she dropped her hands, locking them around her cup once again.

Cassandra had a far-off expression that probably wasn’t too different from her own. Single moms had two kinds of fantasies. The first she called Hot Men Scenarios. They were the standard sweep-you-up, real-life-doesn’t-exist ones. And then there were Thoughtful Hot Men Fantasies, where the guy runs loads of laundry while cleaning the entire house and making you dinner. Preferably something that didn’t come out of a box or can.

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