Page 39 of He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not

‘I’m serious. I’m here to make a change, which means I need to do just that. Let me do this for you. Please.’

Without thinking about it, I touch her hand on my chest. ‘OK.’ I stroke the back of her hand with my thumb. Things just got way more complicated.

* * *

The Next Morning…

‘Dax.’

River’s voice wakes me up. I open one eye, his less-than-thrilled gaze meeting mine.

‘What thefuckare you doing in here?’ he asks in an obnoxious whisper.

I glance over at Hollyn, still sound asleep, my arm cold and dead underneath her.

‘Shh.’ I pull a single finger to my lips as I slowly remove my arm from beneath her and jump out of bed, dragging River into the living room with me, closing the bedroom door quietly, so we don’t wake Hollyn up.

‘It’s not what it looks like.’

‘It looks like you fucked my sister in my bed,’ he thunders.

‘Will you shut up?’ I half yell back. ‘Do you truly think I’d do that? Something happened last night, Riv. Not between her and me, but me and Professor Cocksucker. She was scared, and asked me to sleep in there. What was I supposed to do? I couldn’t possibly say no. She was terrified.’

‘I’ll bet you couldn’t say no,’ he says sarcastically.

‘Trust me, if something was going to happen between your sister and me, I’d talk to you about it.’

His angry face fades, and a smirk grows. ‘Dad says you whooped him good.’

‘I was pissed. He tried to tell heryouwanted her to go back to him.’

‘What?No. I filed a complaint with the college. An investigation has been opened on his “extracurricular activities”.’

That explains part of Tristan’s anger.

‘Listen,’ I half hiss. ‘I was just trying to help, and now I’m in this in a way I never wanted to be. All because of you.’ I take a deep breath; I smell her. I lift the neck of my shirt to my nose. Jesus, that perfume is gonna kill me.

‘I almost got arrested last night, Riv.’

He laughs.

‘It’s not funny.’

‘It’s a little funny,’ he says, pinching his fingers together.

The knock at the door is almost a relief. The last thing I want to do is think about the fact that I hardly slept last night. Mostly I just stared at the ceiling, worried about a million things.

I pull open the door to Brynn.

‘You did it!’ she says excitedly. ‘I knew you’d love this idea. I’d have brought you flowers to celebrate, but who brings a florist flowers?’ She laughs, setting a bouquet of fruit cut into flower shapes on my kitchen island. ‘When do we start?’

‘We?’

‘Well, yeah. You need an assistant, right?’

The door of River’s room opens, and Hollyn walks out. My gaze goes right to her. Her hair is wild. She’s wearing her black-framed glasses, and one leg of her sweats is pulled up around her calf. Yet she’s still completely gorgeous.

‘Who’s this?’ Brynn asks, looking between River, me, and Hollyn. ‘She’s cute,’ she whispers.

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