Page 68 of Baby Surprise for my Brother's Best Friend

She's showing off way too much for my self-control.

Her legs are crossed, her smirk teasing, and the gravity of her pulls me in.

It’s not just lust. It’s need. It’s that aching, inevitable slide into something I can’t walk away from.

We end up at this hole-in-the-wall pizza joint I’ve loved since high school. Faded awning, flickering neon sign, and a linoleum floor that’s seen better decades.

Sophie eyes the cracked vinyl booth like it might bite her.

“This is your idea of a date?”

I grin as I slide into the seat across from her. “Trust me,dolcezza. You’re about to meet the love of your life. And she’s a slice of pepperoni.”

When the pizza lands, greasy, bubbling, glorious, she takes one hesitant bite. Then moans.

Loudly.

My grip on the plastic cup full of Coke nearly snaps.

She dabs her mouth delicately with a napkin, like she didn’t just kill me. Like she didn’t just moan in a way that will haunt my dreams.

My pulse is still racing, my thoughts completely derailed, and she’s over there acting like she didn’t just melt my brain with one bite.

“Okay, fine. That was... obscenely good.”

“Told you.” I smirk. “You’ve been living a lie. All that fancy wood-fired flatbread crap? Fraudulent.”

She rolls her eyes, but she’s smiling. Her real smile. Not her professional smile. Not the controlled one she wears like armor. This one’s easy. Unfiltered.

“You’re such a food snob.”

“And you’ve clearly never had real pizza before. So, I’m changing your life, one slice at a time.”

We fall into that rhythm I never knew I missed, snark for snark, sass for sass.

I tell her about my high school pudgy phase, how I was the chunky Italian kid no one looked at twice until my voice dropped and I shot up six inches in one summer.

“You? Chunky?” She laughs, eyes sparkling. “I need proof.”

“There’s a yearbook somewhere with a tragic bowl cut and enough baby fat to open a bakery.”

She leans over the table, chin propped on her hand. “God, I bet you were adorable.”

“Nope. Just sweaty and always hungry.”

“Some things haven’t changed.” She nudges my foot under the table.

I glance at where her foot lingers, deliberate, teasing, and meet her gaze.

She laughs, full and loud and completely unguarded, and it hits me low and hard, like a sucker punch to the chest.

That sound could bring me to my knees.

For a second, nothing feels complicated. Just her, and me, and a greasy table between us. No threats. No headlines. Just this.

And damn, I could get used to this. I crave it.

After dinner, we wander the streets, the kind of walk you only take when the night feels too perfect to end.

---