Page 25 of A More Than Mayhem Christmas

Face back in her hands, she shakes it slowly. “I’m the actual worst.”

Maybe I shouldn’t laugh at her reaction, but I do. And she doesn’t seem to mind it. I settle my hand on her back, duck my head so it’s closer to hers. “It’s fine,” I repeat. “It’s not like we had the same friends back then.”

Heidi peers up at me, just one eye open. “We didn’t?”

“No,” I assure. “I played baseball with Jake.”

“You did?” she almost yells.

“But Dylan played basketball, right?” Everyone knows Dylan and Heidi got together sophomore year. From what I understand, they stayed that way until college, when Dylan joined the Marines. He met Riley when he came home on medical, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Heidi groans now, sitting up straight. “Thank you for trying to make me feel better. I appreciate it.” She offers a smile that has me pulling away slightly. Heidi Stanford has always been beautiful… in that untouchable kind of way. Even without being Dylan’s girl, very few boys had the courage to speak to her, let alone look in her direction. To be honest, it’s hard to believe I’m even doing it now.

“You know what it is?” she says, then runs a finger along my arm. “It’s the tattoos. I bet you didn’t have them in school.”

“Actually…”

“No, you didn’t!”

I crack a smile. “You’re right. I didn’t.”

Her eye roll makes me want to smile wider. I don’t. Instead, I glance toward the door, then back at her, and ask something I’vewanted to since I stepped out and noticed her here. “What are you doing out here?”

After emptying the rest of her glass, she mumbles, “The wheel fell off.”

“Thewheel?”

She sighs, long and loud, her shoulders dropping with the force. “I’ve been the ninth wheel for a long time, and sometimes I just need to…”

“Fall off?”

Nodding, she rests her back against the siding and faces me completely. “I have to say, I’m glad youknow-know the guys, otherwise the paranoid part of me would assume that you’re here for me.”

“Uh…”

“I mean, like, they wanted to set me up with you.”

“Oh.”

“No offense. I just?—”

“Definitelydon’t need help in that department,” I cut in.

Her mouth opens, shuts, opens again. For a second, I think I may have said something wrong. “If it makes you feel any better, I never confirmed that I was going to come tonight.”

“Same,” she says.

“So, technically, the wholepimping us out to each otherthing is very unlikely.”

She taps her temple. “I like the way you think.” Her eyes are right on mine for the first time in what might be ever, and the longer she stares, the harder it is tobreathe. Ridiculous, I know, but it is what it is.

I clear my throat, break the stare. “Riley mentioned you live in Atlanta?”

“Riley mentioned me?”

“She likes to sit in the cars I work on and update me on everything.”

“Everything?”

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