Page 123 of Will Bark for Pizza
“Babe, you know I wouldn’t push you if I thought you weren’t happy anymore, right?”
I smiled at her. “I know.”
“Writing is in your blood. It’ll come back. Inspiration could be anywhere. You just have to keep your eyes—and your heart—open.”
My gaze flickered back toward the cabin in the trees. The same one Husker had been zeroed in on since he spotted his new best friend. Beckett walked the property with Karl, and though I wasn’t an expert body language reader, I was willing to bet the sale of the cabin was a done deal.
“It’s so weird to see Uncle Karl out here after he avoided the place for a decade.”
“But it’s nice, right? It’s too sad to think that little cabin has been empty more than not.”
“Yeah.”
“You should help him fix it up,” Lila suggested.
“I’m not the handy one.”
Lila flashed me a wicked smile, wiggling her fingers suggestively. “Handy, handsy. It’s the same thing, right?”
I looked away, unable to fight the smile that spread across my own lips as I imagined the two of us all alone in that cabin. Out here, no one would ever have to know. Except, I did own a flashy red Jeep that the locals would quickly come to recognize as mine, now that I was staying in Bluebell Springs for good.
Maybe Pauline was right to be stern with me.
Friends, Kira.Justfriends.
But that mantra was starting to sound a whole lot like the bullshit it was.
Friends. Somebenefits?
“You’re totally screwed,” Lila said in a fit of giggles.
She wasn’t wrong.
THIRTY-SIX
BECKETT
I spotteda nose wedged between the table and my elbow about two seconds before the cold, wet thing rubbed against my skin. Not quite enough time to hide the flinch that followed.
“Husker,” Kira said, her tone a gentle warning.
He ignored her and pushed his nose closer to the table, moving my arm further out of the way to better accommodate him.
I broke off a piece of crust and looked to Kira for permission.
“Might as well,” she said, reaching for her glass of strawberry lemonade.
I focused on the pizza crust so I didn’t stare at the way her lips suctioned around the straw. It didn’t matter that Nana warned me to keep things professional and platonic with Kira. Or that her brothers—my two best friends—were also seated at the patio table outside PizzaPatty’s. My imagination went fucking feral when it came to Kira and what she could do with those lips.
I blamed it on the spider incident. The one where Kira ended up wrapped around me like a pretzel.
Husker snatched the pizza crust from my hands, tail wagging in victory, as though it were the first piece he conned anyone out of tonight. It wasn’t.
“When are we moving you home?” Connor asked Kira.
“What’s thisweshit?” Luke chimed in.
“Do you hate me that much?” Kira fired back at him.
