Page 60 of Breakaway Hearts

“I’ll make this a cheat day,” he says. “I think I’ve earned it. You know me, though. I want to be in the best shape possible. I’m not gonna play well on the ice if I’m stuffed with mozzarella sticks and ice cream.”

“Fair.” I tilt my head in acknowledgement. “Although I don’t envy that part of your job.”

“What partdoyou envy?”

“Easy. The adoring fans.”

We laugh again, and he nudges me with his shoulder before turning on the TV to some cheesy action movie that neither of us will pay attention to. Reese likes background noise, and I get that. I usually need it when I’m in a bad mood or missing my dad, but it’s nice sometimes when it’s just the two of us hanging out too.

Because, oddly enough, even though we’ll be sleeping in the same bed tonight and I somehow came just from giving him a blowjob, it also still feels like we’re just two friends spending an evening together. It makes me think that this whole friends with benefits thing might actually work. At the core of it, Reese and I are friends. Experimenting like this, learning from him, isn’t going to ruin our friendship.

And it’s turning out to be a lot more fun andwaymore illuminating than I expected.

“You know,” he says after a moment, picking up a brownie. “The romance novels were a surprise to me.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. It just makes me wonder what else I don’t know about my best friend.” He lowers the volume slightly on the TV and glances at me. “I thought I knew everything about you.”

“There’s no way you could knoweverythingabout me,” I murmur, lifting one shoulder. “There’s probably plenty I don’t know about you too, I’m sure.”

“I guess so.” He nods thoughtfully, although he doesn’t seem pleased by that fact.

“Definitely.”

“Then tell me something I don’t know about you.”

Reese’s determination to fill in the gaps of his ‘Callie knowledge’ makes me smile, and I hide my grin behind a slice of pizza as I consider my answer. I have to think about it for a while, because even though he didn’t know about the romance novels or just how bad my relationship with Austin had gotten, Reesedoesknow me very well. It takes a couple of minutes for me to come up with a fact about myself that I haven’t told him before.

“How about this? My first kiss was with Ben Atherton when I was in fifth grade.”

Reese gapes at me. “When you were ingrade school? Damn, Firefly, look at you. I didn’t have my first kiss until I was fifteen. How was it? Amazing? Life changing?”

“Disgusting.” I make a face. “So awkward. Slimy, kind of? It only lasted like two seconds, and I still ended up getting scolded by Mrs. Watson because Kathy Lowell saw us from behind the slide at recess.”

He shakes his head in mock outrage. “Damn it, Kathy.”

“Right? I think she had a crush on Ben, and I swear, the two of us didn’t speak another word to each other until high school.”

“What a grudge.”

Reese leans over the side of the bed and digs into his bag, producing a pack of Twizzlers. I gasp as he straightens up. He opens the bag, passes them my way, and I immediately dig into it.

“You are an angel of a man.”

He laughs. “Well, I didn’t know we’d end up ordering room service, so I brought them just in case. And since this hotel shockingly doesn’t have Twizzlers on the menu, it’s a good thing I did.”

I let out a satisfied moan that makes his eyes heat. “You’re the best. Seriously, I’m thinking about fakemarryingyou at this point.”

“Hah.” He nudges me with his shoulder, but there’s a slight flush in his cheeks. He lounges back on the bed, his expression turning thoughtful. “But I guess you were right. I don’t know everything about you. How did I not know about your first kiss? That seems like some very basic getting-to-know-you stuff right there.”

“Not if I’m absolutely mortified about it.”

“But still.”

He tugs his lower lip between his teeth, and the sudden urge to kiss him hits me like a ton of bricks. It’s almost a magnetic desire, and if it weren’t for the Twizzler I have between my lips, I might’ve done it without even thinking.

Have Reese and I even kissed since we started this whole friends with benefits situation? I think back on it, but our first and only kiss was at the charity event in front of Sienna. Maybe it’s better if kissing isn’t part of the friends with benefits/sex tutor deal, but it’s not anything we’ve ever discussed. Does he just not want to kiss me?

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