Page 33 of Lose You Twice

She steps farther inside and closes the door behind her. “I’ll try to look trustworthy.”

I have the strongest urge to go to her, but I grip the edge of the counter instead, physically making myself stay right where I am.

Harlow claps once. “Okay. I’m stealing Grayson for a second.”

She drags him toward his room, leaving the apartment suddenly too quiet behind them.

Wren shifts her bag higher on her shoulder.

For the first time all day, there is no drill to run, no call to answer, no list to complete.

Just Wren Calloway standing in my kitchen, looking like a problem I never learned how to solve.

5

WREN

“So,” Kai says.

Perfect. I shift my bag higher on my shoulder. “So.”

His mouth twitches.

Barely.

It still does something stupid to my chest.

We have reached the full conversational range of two people who used to pass notes in Spanish class and make out behind my parents’ garage.

I stand in the middle of his apartment with my bag digging into my shoulder, marker on my hand from Lily’s spelling flashcards, and immediate regret for letting Harlow convince me that stopping by Grayson’s would be quick.

She is cheerful, persuasive, and completely shameless when she thinks she’s helping. Which is how I ended up here, standing in a sea of awkwardness, while she disappeared down the hall with her boyfriend and left me alone with the boy who left when I needed him the most.

Except he is not a boy anymore.

That is part of the problem.

Kai stands near the counter in a PCU hockey shirt that shows me just how not boyish he is anymore. Followed by gray sweats and damp hair, disheveled like he just ran his hands through it and called it a day. He looks tired, but he looks good. Damn good.

It makes me want to knock something over or climb him like a tree, and neither of those are viable options at this particular moment.

Down the hall, I hear Harlow laugh. Grayson answers her, too low for me to catch. A door clicks shut.

Traitors.

Scanning the room, the apartment is exactly what I should have expected from Kai Mercer. Shoes lined up by the door. Keys sitting in a bowl. Mail stacked in a neat pile on the counter, never scattered around. Two protein shakers drying beside the sink with their lids placed next to them.

Even the blanket on the couch is folded perfectly.

Kai notices me looking. “What?”

“Nothing.”

“That sounded like something.”

“It’s just very clean in here.”

Which is slightly making me feel even worse about the absolute disaster zone of my house currently, not to mention my own bedroom. Making sure the twins and Justin keep their rooms clean? Yes. Cleaning my own? No. It’s more of a ‘do as I say, not as I do’ situation.”