Page 11 of Friends to WHAT?!

“You’re wearing the bracelet we got you.”

Oh. My. Freaking.Stars.

“I’m confused,” I say, because I am. So confused. Because a man who ignores anois not a man who notices what jewelry a woman is wearing, and a man who ignores anois not a man whose eyes soften like molten sapphires, and a man who ignoresanois not a man who sets my heart trampling through my chest like the clash of a hundred falling stars hitting land.

And yet.

Here he stands.

Wolfe’s sharp canines dig into his lower lip as he hesitates, seeming unsure in what to tell me—in how to spin this scenario to make a lick of justifiable sense. Behind him, Sterne experiences no such qualms.

“Wolfe’s here to kidnap you,” he says. “And Almond and I are here to make sure he follows through with it.”

A breath wheezes out of my mouth, followed by a curse.

Almond skirts around her brother and his friend, who exchangelookswhich could be interpreted as conversation, if only I knew the language of their eyelashes and irises. Alas, I do not.

“Isn’t thisincredible?” Almond whisper-squeals. “A kidnapping! So romantic!”

Understanding doesn’t just hit me, it wallops me.

“Almond,” I breathe, horrified. “Almond, this isn’t abook. You can’t orchestrate a matchmaker type of kidnapping in real life.Bookclub stays atbookclub. Emphasis on thebook, in case you weren’t getting that.B-O-O-K.Book. Fiction. Not reality. Fake. Faux.”

Wolfe adds hands to their visual conversation in a universally interpretableYeah, what she’s saying!sort of way, and Sterne crosses his arms, eyebrow raised in an equally interpretableWhat’s that got to do with anything?

“Well, obviously thebookkidnappings are… bad… probably,” Almond says. “Sort of, anyway, but this kidnapping is totally kosher and chill. This is a friends-to-lovers situation, so none of that angsty vitriol and emotional torment that the typical enemies-to-lovers kidnapping entails. Just pure, unadulteratedromance.” She sighs dreamily, swaying on her feet.

“Friends towhat?” I hiss. I poke her toward a golden velvet chaise lounge on the other side of the floor before she can swoon where we stand. The chaise gets bonus points for being farther away from Wolfe, who’s moved from nonverbal communication to harried whispers with Sterne. Fervently, I ignore them both in a bid to protect what little bits of sanity this current situation might allow me to keep. I am wholly unprepared to deal with Wolfe Real Man, as we all well know, and so, I simply will not until I have absolutely no other choice but to acknowledge and interact.

“Lovers,” Almond repeats. “Is that not obvious?”

“Almond.”

“Leora?”

“Almond.”

“Leora??”

Screw Almond’s potential swooning, I throw my own self onto the chaise distressed-princess style. “I am not friends-to-lovering your brother!” I hiss. “I didn’t even want to meet him!”

She plops down next to me, mother-knows-best style. “That’s how the kidnapping trope usually starts, yes. If you wanted to be with him, then the kidnapping would just be… a date? I guess? I don’t know. Nobody is writing consensual kidnapping. It would be stupid and boring.” She tips her head toward Wolfe. “Us, though? We’re cornering the market here.Doublenon-consent. Wolfe is being coerced and bullied into this. Not as hot, I know, but maybe you’re in a regular degular romcom instead of the dark romances we prefer?” She shrugs. “The only thing I know is that the two of you belong together, and I had an opportunity to be a part of making that happen in the funnest of ways. I did think you’d bea littlemore excited about a kidnapping, but whatever.” She sniffs. “If you’ve gone soft and boring, that’s fine. I guess.”

I gape. “You arenottrying to guilt me into being excited about my impending abduction.”

She shrugs. “I’m nottryingto do anything. All those book club meetings with you raving about the romance of cages and chains and the like just had me thinking thatmaybeyou’d appreciate the efforts Sterne and I have gone to a little bit more.” She blinks wide, shining blue eyes.

I sigh. “Al, I know he’s your brother, and you love him, but he’s aman. And there’s a whole lot of difference between me sending him letters and me being within six feet of him.” I shake my head. “Also, I told him I didn’t want to meet. This–” I wave a hand toward the rising voices across the shop. “Is not okay. In a book is one thing. In a book, we know it’s not real. We know that the characters are meant to be together, or soulmates, or fated, or whatever else. Real life doesn’t work like that. Real life people don’t live up to the stories woven on pages, no matter how badly we want them to. Real life people act in ways that belay whatever goodness they might be on paper. Real life people disappoint. Real life men especially. This isn’t a love story, my friend. This is the culmination of all my fears come to life. This is a situation we can’t come back from. We only have forward. And forward? That’s where my heart breaks.”

As it is, the poor organ is already hoping for things she’s never going to get. Weknow. We’ve been here before—notherehere, with a pen pal come to kidnap, buthereat a crossroads where we have to choose to believe in the goodness of a man we think we know or protect ourselves. Last time, we believed for far too long that a man would change for us—because he should have, because he was supposed to, because a father is meant tofatherhis daughter, not force her into responsibilities she never should have had.

I will not be making that mistake again, no matter what my hopeless romantic heart would have me do. This time,I’min charge of my fate.

This time, we stay safe from the disappointment of disappointing men.

“But what if it’s better with him?” Almond asks, not unkindly.

“But what if it’s not?” I reply, smiling sadly.