Page 122 of The Book Club Boyfriend
“Wow,” she says, crouching to scratch behind his ears. “There’s my best guy.”
“Honestly, I’m the third wheel in this relationship,” I mutter, locking the door behind us.
She toes off her shoes and pads into the living room like she’s done it a dozen times—which she hasn’t, but it feels like she has.
“You want anything to drink?”
She shakes her head. “I’m good.”
“I feel like it’s a movie-in-bed kind of night. You in?”
She gives me a look. “Are you trying to get me into your bed, Remington?”
“Is it working?”
Rip—my man—leads the way, tail wagging, and Scarlett follows.
She’s never seen my bedroom, and she pauses in the doorway.
She doesn’t say much at first; she just looks around. The walls are painted a soft gray, and there’s a worn leather chair in the corner. The king-sized bed is halfway made—the dark gray duvet flung haphazardly over the mattress. If she notices I sleep like a human tornado, she doesn’t call me on it. One pillow’s near the foot, another is sideways by the headboard.
Her eyes linger on the photo by the window, the one of me and my brother on the frozen pond back home. Then they land on the book by the nightstand.Herbook.
Finally, she sits on the side of the bed. “I expected more trophies. Or at least one life-sized cutout of yourself.”
I grin. “That’s in storage.”
Scarlett laughs, and it’s the best sound in the world.
I queue up some random comfort movie—something we’ll pretend to watch and absolutely won’t. We end up propped against pillows, the flatscreen streaming some chaotic rom-com neither of us is paying attention to. Rip is at our feet like he’s supervising.
I look at her then—really look—and she’s close, warm, soft around the edges in a way that makes my chest ache. Her lips are right there. Her sarcasm is right there. And I want all of it.
So I lean in slowly, giving her time to pull away.
She doesn’t.
Our mouths meet in that soft, tentative way that saysthis is new again, but it’s still us.
She shifts closer, hand sliding up my chest, and suddenly it’s not tentative anymore.
It’s heat and memory and want. It’s her fingers in my hair and my hands on her waist and the soft sound she makes when I deepen the kiss like I’ve been dying to.
Rip sighs at our feet like he’s unimpressed. We ignorehim.
We kiss until we forget there was ever a reason not to.
We eventually pull apart, breathless and dazed, her forehead resting against mine.
Neither of us speaks right away.
She’s still close—so close—and all I can think isdon’t screw this up again.
She blinks at me, lips pink and kiss-bruised. “So… are we still watching this movie, or are we just lying to Rip now?”
I glance at the screen where two characters are having an aggressively slow-motion food fight. “I think even Rip has checked out.”
Scarlett turns her head, and sure enough, he’s passed out at the foot of the bed, paws twitching in some epic dog dream.
