Page 54 of The Overtime Persuasive

The part afterward? Also pretty great.

I press the phone to my chest and laugh. Mitch watches from beside the fruit bowl, his expression so disapproving he might as well be wearing tiny glasses and holding a clipboard.

“Don’t even start judging me. I get to have this right now.” I point at him with the phone. “Do you know why? Because it doesn’t cost me twelve thousand dollars. That’s why.”

I look at Liam’s messages again and type:

It was all very…

I hit send and my thumb hovers over the keyboard. What comes after that?

Unexpected?

Excellent?

Life-altering in a way that makes me nervous enough to consider changing my identity and fleeing the country?

Yes.

He replies almost immediately.

Liam

Exactly.

I grin and set the phone on the counter before I can say anything else. I need to leave in ten minutes. Barely enough time to pull my hair up, fill my bag, and get downstairs, let alone conduct a full post-kiss analysis with the man involved.

Not to mention that my nervous system is humming at such a high frequency, I’m pretty sure I’ve activated fight-or-flight mode.

My phone dings again.

Liam:

I’m putting tickets aside for Lucy and Dad for Tuesday’s opener.

Would you like to come?

“Oh.” The excitement in my chest shifts. It doesn’t disappear, but something heavier slips in beneath it. I set the phone down.

“That makes it feel real.” I glance at Mitch. “I really wish you could talk.”

He stares at me for a moment, then gracefully lifts a leg in the air and begins to groom his butt.

“Show off. I see what you think.” I brace both hands on the counter. “If Liam and I had only met last night, this would be him inviting me to his opening game with his sister and his father. That’s an entire level of introduction after one date. Possibly three levels. It might even be a whole relationship staircase. But I already know Lucy, and I’ve met their dad. He’s comfortable with me. So, technically, Liam could be inviting me because I’m Lucy’s friend.”

Mitch swaps legs, making sure his other cheek is as clean as it can be.

“Or he could be inviting me as the woman whose lips he was attempting to resuscitate last night…I would like to think it’s a little of both.”

I pick up the phone and reread the text. All he’s asking is if I want to attend a hockey game. He hasn’t asked me to move in. There is no jewelry involved. No one has taken out a billboard beside the highway announcing that Eva Barlow kissed Liam Snyder and liked it.

It’s me. “I’m making this weird.”

Mitch meows.

“I really don’t need that from you right now,” I mutter, tapping away on my screen.

Sure. Save me a ticket.