Page 6 of Friends to WHAT?!

Easy as pie. For the man not being torn apart at the seams to such a degree that federal crime seems like a feasible solution.

Maybe he’s right, though. Maybe I should just spit it out. Not one word at a time, but faster, like a Band-Aid. Rip it right off. Get it out there. Then, he can look at me with his sharp, stern eyes and his terrifying, judgmental demeanor, and I can rest easy in the knowledge that kidnapping is not a solution to any problem, ever, at all.

So I’ll just. Rip it off, then. I guess.

I take a fortifying breath and blurt, “I told Leora I want to meet and she told me no and Amia thinks I should kidnap her and I told Amia no but honestly it’s seeming like a good idea to me and in line with my decision to be less passive and more proactive in my relationships and life.”

I freeze after the words have left my lips, not daring to move as I wait for his response.

In a testament of his love for me, he does not laugh in my face.

In a testament of hisabsolute insanity, he instead tilts his head, brows rising as if he might be considering the merits of kidnapping.

“Please tell me you are not considering the merits of kidnapping,” I hiss, leaning over the table. “I texted you so you could be a voice of reason.”

“Seems like a reasonable person would think of all sides before outright dismissing an avenue that could provide his friend some relief,” he notes, casually. Because my relief is of utmost importance whenabducting a womanis on the table.

“Sterne, be serious.”

“I am being serious. Perfectly serious.” He raises aperfectly seriouseyebrow. “I don’t think Leora would mind a littlekidnapping, considering she and Almond are in the same book club, and Almond is where Amia got the idea, I’d assume?”

“You’d assume correctly,” I confirm. “And annoyingly. What are you, Sherlock Holmes? Stop connecting pieces to a puzzle that barely exists.”

“No,” he retorts. “So Almond and Leora read books where kidnapping is not only happening, but happening in such a way that they would view it in a positive light. Ergo, ipso facto, and so, Leora loves kidnapping. Presumably this means she loves a romance where the man is perhaps not quite morally white.” He eyes my stark white hair, and frowns. “Maybe we dye that back to black?” he asks. “To get you in the right headspace for sweeping your girl off her feet and into your tower, where she’ll live happily ever after—after several hundred pages of will-they-won’t-they enemies-to-lovers nonsense that makes women like Leora and your sister swoon.”

“I’m not dying my hair,” I dismiss. I like my white hair. It reduces the number of people mistaking me for Fox by one hundred percent. “And you’re doing a terrible job of upholding the law right now. Aren’t you supposed to be morally correct?”

“I’m a firefighter, not a cop,” he scoffs. “I don’t have to be morally anything. I just have to stop things from burning and people from suffocating in the smoke.”

“Right,” I drawl. “You just have to be the knight in shining armor, saving lives and keeping the world from burning to the ground. No morals required. Obviously.”

“Obviously,” he agrees. “Now, about your kidnapping.”

I groan. “This is horrible. I’m not meant to be talkingyoudown from a human snatching. You’re meant to be talkingmedown. Please, learn your role and heed it.”

“That’s stupid,” he declares. “Leora wants to be kidnapped. She’ll love it.”

“She’ll love it?” I repeat, deadpan. “Do you even hear yourself?”

“I do, and what I hear is the sound of me being dead right.” His gaze strays to the rest of the room, scanning, then alights. “An expert among us,” he mutters before yelling across the bar. “Almond! Come here!”

My head whips around to watch as my little sister yells back, “Let me grab a drink first!” Her pink hair sits piled artfully atop her head, taunting me. It would be so easy to grab hold of that knot andyankuntil she explains to me why she thought it would be a good idea to tell my daughter—who is eight—that kidnapping is romantic, thus putting it inmyhead thatkidnapping might be freaking romantic. I’m in a desperate spiral right now on so many fronts, and she isnot helping.

“If Almond is an ‘expert’, then we’re all doomed,” I grump, slouching back against the leather. “She told Amia that kidnapping is romantic. She hasn’t got a single contained marble in her entire body.”

“The only person whose marbles are loose is you, my friend,” Sterne retorts. “We’ve got a perfectly viable solution to several of your problems here, and you aren’t giving it nearly the credit it deserves.”

I sputter. “Which problems does this solve without creating new, bigger problems?”

He lists them, lifting a finger with each example. “The one where you want to have, in your own words, ‘more initiative.’ The one where you’re head over heels in love with this woman and want her in your life in a more substantial way. And, last but most definitely not least, the one where you need someone to love you back with the sort of love that you give to others, no matter how ‘passive’ you think you’ve been. I see you. I see the love you have in you and how much of it you pour out. You deserve all of the wonder and beauty this life has to offer. You’vegot much of it in your family and in your daughter and in your friends, but you needlove, too, Wolfe. You deserve it, and you’re going to get it, even if it takes a kidnapping to make it happen.”

He ends intense and determined, and I fear for my immediate future—and Leora’s. If I don’t kidnap her, I wouldn’t put it past him to do it for me.

“Scoot over,” Almond interrupts my gaping to demand, making a feeble attempt to push me into obedience.

I take full advantage of my status as Large Man and do not move.

She huffs, and Sterne shimmies over so she can slide into the certifiably insane side of the booth where she belongs.