Page 56 of Chasing After You
“Are we talking about the night Kenley and Knox met?” Cass asks, wandering into the living room with Jason in tow.
“Yep,” Matti answers, his hand moving up my back and into my hair where he starts to twirl a strand of it around his fingers. A small thing. One he started when we were still teenagers. And the reason I’ve never cut my hair shorter than shoulder length. Even when we were apart. I just couldn’t get myself to do it. Although part of me felt like shaving it all off might give me the relief I needed, the clean slate I was desperate for, I still couldn’t cut it. “But hey, after that tale, let’s revisit the first time the two of you kissed. I think Ness might find that story particularly interesting.”
Cass shoots him a dirty look but says nothing while Kenley takes the lead on filling me in on how she and Knox met, “Alright, if we must tell it, here’s how it really went. Minus the fairy tale embellishments.” She abandons her cutting board and moves to the stove. “First, my best friend showed up to surprise me with concert tickets, which was already pretty awesome of her. Then, when I was too much of a chicken to get in line to meet Knox and the band, she went and did it for me. Only she didn’t tell me she was doing it. She lied and said she was going to the bathroom.”
“Arizona,” Knox cuts in. “She’s a real fuckin’ trip. Pretty sure she insulted me twice before asking me to have a meet and greet with her friend via video chat.” He grins. “All it took was one look at Kenley before I knew I had to have that conversation in person.”
“That’s when he followed me into the parking lot,” she points out, checking her assortment of seasonings and adding someto her pot as she goes on, “Which was only shortly before he followed me to the all-night diner where he invited himself for midnight pancakes...before then inviting himself into my whole life, like, a few hours later.” She looks up, gazing traveling across the room and straight at him. “You know, this could just as easily have read like a court case instead of a fairy tale.”
“Oh, please,” Jason snorts. “We were all there for the pancakes and googly eyes. Nobody looks at their stalker the way you were looking at Knox, all mesmerized and shit.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Kenley doesn’t admit to a thing. Just keeps on stirring that broth.
When no one else picks up where she left off, it finally hits me. “Was that it? You two met at a meet and greet and were living together the next morning?”
Kenley sets down her wooden spoon. “Not exactly.”
“Yes,” Knox counters. “Exactly. Just took some of us longer to catch on to what was happening than others.”
“Speaking of,” she pauses to rinse her cutting board before she continues, “Sloan mentioned there was mail for you. Did you officially move in and forget to tell me?”
He shrugs. “I left my favorite guitar there. Obviously, I live there now.”
“Obviously.” She stares at him sternly for about three seconds. Then she’s all smiles and delighted gleam in her eyes. “Wait. Seriously?”
“Woman, you gotta stop being so surprised by this shit.” But Knox isn’t fooling anyone. He’s just as mushy and glowy as she is.
There’s something so intimate about their joy, I suddenly feel compelled to redirect the attention away from them. “Next story.” I rub my hands together with anticipation. “Cass and Jason’s first kiss.”
Matti smirks. “And the magic line that made it all happen.”
Cass practically glowers at him. “I already told you I’d totally spaced where I’d heard the line when I used it!”
Jason just laughs.
“What line?” I look back and forth between them, waiting for one of them to answer.
“Your line.” Matti chuckles, tapping his lower lip with his fingertips.
“My line?” I don’t recall having one of those. But then, I haven’t dated in over two decades, so I haven’t had much use for them.
“About getting bit.” Cass rolls her eyes and sighs in surrender. “On the mouth.”
Suddenly, I find I’m perking up with a brand-new wave of joy. “You told Jason something bit your lip to get him to kiss you? As an adult? And it worked?” I sit up a little taller, inching my way to the edge of the sofa, practically bursting with curiosity. “Were you outdoors?”
“No.” Cass’s nose twitches uncomfortably. “We were inside. It was before soundcheck.”
“And it only worked because I already knew the story,” Jason adds, grinning from ear to ear. “Plus, I really wanted to fucking kiss that woman, so there was that.”
“Man, I feel like I missed all the important stuff while I was gone.” I shake my head at all the changes that came to pass in the last two years. “You two are finally together. It turns out Knox really does have a heart. And a liking for commitment. To a woman.”
“Wow.” Knox shakes his head. “That was a lot of specifying at the end there. And the beginning wasn’t all that flattering either.”
“And she forgot the kid.” Kenley comes strolling around the sofa and slides into his lap. “And the dogs. You committed to a whole package of craziness.”
His face practically melts into a state of bliss the second she’s wrapping herself around him. “Hell yeah, I did.” He kisses her softly. “Best damn thing I ever did, too.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
