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Weakly, I held up my serving of pie. “Not sure I should have any more sugar, you know?”
Greer took a conspicuous sip of her iced tea. When Ivy continued staring at her, she patted her stomach. “I’m stuffed, but, uh, next batch, I promise.”
Ivy muttered something under her breath.
I fought a smile. “Nothing happened,” I told them. “It was Ian’s fault, really.”
“It always is,” Greer murmured. “We can’t take him anywhere.”
“What did he do?” Ivy asked, picking up one of the cookies from the plate and setting it back down with a slight grimace.
“He was dumb enough to put them on opposing teams, and apparently, that was all it took to trigger some dumb caveman switch in their dumb brains.”
I swallowed hard, watching Dean abandon his lone game of basketball to pick up the football. He looked like an athlete, even next to Parker and Beckett. The long legs, arms roped with muscle, the trim hips and big hands. He tossed the ball in the air, then told Parker to run a route.
He heaved the ball, a perfect spiral, that landed into Parker’s outstretched hands.
Jax was standing behind them, hands on his hips, his chest bare and the lines of his stomach glistening. My heart rate jumped, and I tore my eyes away.
“You’d think they’d have so much to bond over,” Greer said lightly. “Given their shared sexual attraction to this very fine young woman here.”
If looks could kill, my sister would be so freaking dead.
“Sexual attraction isn’t enough,” Ivy said thoughtfully, “Dean doesn’t actually have any sexualencounterswith Poppy.”
Greer made a smallaahsound.
My face was seven thousand degrees. “I’m never telling you guys anything ever again.”
Greer patted my arm. “Yes, you will. None of us can help ourselves.”
“Think about it,” Ivy continued. “Jax has quite literally staked his claim on you.”
“He really didn’t,” I said firmly. “There is no claiming of anything, and it’s so much better that way.”
Ivy ignored me because she was the worst. “He didn’t just sleep with you. He left his seed inside you. His line is continuing inside of your body, visible proof of his virility for all to see.”
The fork in my hand slowly lowered back down to the plate, the nugget inside me choosing that precise moment for a few little fluttery movements. My eyes pinched shut.
“I can quite literally feel the feminism leaving my body as you’re saying this,” Greer whispered. “It’s bizarre.”
I blew out a slow breath.
“Even if Dean’s reasons for wanting to wait are valid and understandable, in the alpha male hierarchy, the boy’s at a disadvantage, and he knows it.”
“I don’t need him to be in the alpha male hierarchy,” I hissed. “That’s not even a real thing.”
“Yes, it is,” they said in unison.
Jax chose that moment to pick up his T-shirt off the ground, the muscles in his stomach flexing as he pulled the shirt back over his head and tugged it back over his chest. My pulse skittered at the way his massive biceps curled under the surface of his skin. When the shirt fell back into place, the dark line of hair that split his stomach disappeared.
“Dean doesn’t need to sleep with me to prove anything,” I said, but the words sounded weak even to my own ears. “He’s a good boyfriend. A great one.”
“We know,” Greer said gently. “And it’s obvious he’s crazy about you.”
He was.
So why aren’t you in love with him, a voice whispered at the back of my head. The past four months had been filled with so much good. Warm affection and easy laughs and excellent conversation. The lack of heat hadn’t registered because the decision was taken out of my hands. But why wasn’t I in love with him? Even thinking the question triggered an anxious tightening in my throat. It wasn’t that I was afraid to admitthat Dean wasn’t The One. If I was honest with myself, I knew it even before Jax came home.
