Page 45 of Feels Like Coming Home

Did I make you blush?

I hate you.

I totally did ;) For real though, play hooky today and meet me. 3 o’clock work?

Screw Cam and his ability to know exactly what I was doing or thinking or feeling.

Fine. I’ll meet you at Coastal Brews. Now leave me alone, I have a business to run.

Alrighty *boss*. I’ll see ya later.

I set my phone down and tried to catch my breath. I read our conversation from top to bottom, still unable to believe what he had said.

You can be the boss of me any day? Was he for real?

The heat was still in my cheeks when I heard footsteps down the hall and looked up to see Piper standing in the hallway, looking at me with a confused expression on her face.

“Hays…you okay?” She was pulling her hair out of the bun she had slept in, her pin-straight hair falling down her back.

I stood up straight and flipped my phone face down. “Yeah, I’m totally fine. Why do you ask?”

She came closer, squinting her eyes at me. “Because you look like you just swallowed a bee. Did you go to Coastal Brews and get all of this?”

“No, Cam did,” I said innocently. “He dropped it off sometime this morning before I came out. It was sitting on the porch.”

I started to unbag the food that I had neglected while texting Cam and set it out on the counter. Piper dropped into one of the bar stools, crossed her arms, and placed her elbows on the counter. When I glanced at her, I could see the sly smile spreading across her face as she studied me.

“Oh, he did, did he?” One of her eyebrows raised.

“Stop.”

“Stop what?! All I was going to say is that his gesture isvery kind. That’s all, I promise.” She was using her innocent voice which she only used when she was acting not so innocent.

“Piper, he’s just a friend. I didn’t ask him to do this. He did it on his own accord. Don’t read anything into it that it’s not.”

She looked at all the food Cam had brought for us and then at the coffees that were sitting on the counter. Her eyes shot back toward me again.

“Suuure, because ‘just friends' bring you enough food to feed an army unannounced AND hand deliver your go-to coffee order to boot? And…wait a second, what is that?!”

She had spotted the note with Cam’s number on the bottom and held it up to her face, reading what he had written.Please let me be swallowed by a sinkhole right now, I cannot deal with this, just please take me now.

“IS THIS HIS NUMBER?!” She wasn’t even three feet away from me but Piper was nearly shouting as she shoved the note in my face, waving it around as if it were a golden ticket to see Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory.

“Isn’t that what it looks like?” I replied curtly.

“Well did you text him?”Here we go, here come the questions.

“Of course I did, I wanted to say thank you. I didn’t wanna be rude.”

“And what did you say?” Piper looked at me like she was a starving animal and I was offering her the first meal she’d had in weeks.

I weighed my options on whether I should tell her and decided that she wouldn’t be able to let it go if I didn’t. I grabbed my phone, unlocked it, and handed it to her.

I watched as her fingers scrolled to the top of the thread and her eyes took off reading, eating up every word like it was free candy. She made a few noises and then squealed.

“YOU CAN BE THE BOSS OF ME ANY DAY?!” Her eyes rolled to the back of her head as she clung my phone to her chest, her mouth wide open and gawking.

“I TOLD you he was in love with you! Holy shit, not only does he love you but I’m pretty sure he wants to fuck you,” she said matter-of-factly. I watched her scroll to the top of the messages again.

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