“Afraid so. His girlfriend pointed out his bubble butt and now he has a complex about it.”

“She’s not my girlfriend,” Weston objects.

I rephrase. “Fuck buddy?”

“I’ll accept it.” He hops to his feet. “Okay, Jensen. Look at this.”

My idiot roommate shoves his sweatpants down to his ankles, presenting his bare ass to my…girlfriend? Fuck buddy? I honestly can’t fill in that blank.

I see Brenna’s lips quivering in the candlelight, as if she’s trying so hard not to laugh.

“Well?” he demands. “Thoughts.”

Her gaze focuses on his backside. “You’ve got a nice butt, Weston,” she concedes. “I wouldn’t worry about it.”

He hauls up his sweats. “Seriously?”

“Seriously. It’s a great ass.”

A grin stretches his face. “Say that again.”

“No.”

That grin shifts to me. “Your girl likes my ass. She’s into me.”

“Nope,” Brenna says cheerfully. “I don’t know where you got ‘I’m into you’ from that, but I can assure you I am not.” She uses one of the “T’s” to put down the word trolley.

“Good one,” I say.

“Thanks, Jakey.”

Brooks flops back onto his pillow mound. “Jakey? Is that what we’re calling you now?” He sounds delighted. “I like it. I’m using it all the time.”

“Sure thing, Brooksy.”

“I take it back. I do not like it.”

“That’s what I thought.”

As the game continues, it’s more competitive than I expect, especially with Brooks in the mix. Our scores are so close it’s impossible to predict the victor. And while I’m having a good time, I’m not giving one hundred percent of my attention to Scrabble. I keep sneaking peeks at Brenna. It’s hard not to. The girl is a smoke show. And I love hearing her laugh. Every time she does, the musical tone makes my heart beat faster.

When Brooks goes to use the john, I move closer to Brenna and slide my hand beneath her sweater.

I’m rewarded with another laugh. “We’re in the middle of a Scrabble game and you decide to stick your hand up my shirt?”

“Yup. Can I leave it here until he gets back?” With a wicked grin, I squeeze her left tit.

“You’re so weird.”

“Nah.”

She snorts. “You can’t always say ‘nah’ to whatever other people say about you.”

“Why not?”

“Because…well…I guess I don’t know why not.” She pauses suddenly, one ear cocked toward the window. “Hey. The thunder stopped.”

“Power’s still not back,” I point out.

“No, really? I thought the candlelight was just setting the ambience for our threesome.”

“We’re having a threesome?!” Brooks exclaims as he bounces back into the room. He looks like an elated little kid. “For real, Connelly? You didn’t want to have a threesome with Kayla but you’ll do it with your girl and—oh dear God, why am I complaining? Shut the fuck up, Brooks,” he scolds himself.

“Kayla?” Brenna echoes.

“His girlfriend.”

“Not my girlfriend.”

“You were going to have a threesome with them?” Brenna narrows her eyes.

“Not at all.” I glance at my roommate. “And make sure Kayla knows that, because I don’t need her ambushing me naked in the kitchen anymore.”

“Oh no, a naked girl in the kitchen! We need to install an alarm system! Someone get us a guard dog!” He gives an exaggerated eye roll. “Anyway. Are we doing this?”

I let him down not so gently. “We’re not having a threesome, now or ever. This new ass-flashing craze of yours is bad enough.”

Brenna’s gaze strays toward the windows again. “I should probably go soon.”

“Wait until the power’s back,” I say gruffly. I don’t like the idea of her being out on the roads. Several traffic lights had been out on our drive home, and I spotted more than one fender-bender.

“What time is it?” she asks. “If I’m going to leave, it needs to be sooner rather than later.”

I lean forward to check her phone. “It’s almost ten. Maybe you should—” The screen suddenly illuminates with an incoming call, and since I’m looking right at it, I can’t miss the name of the caller.

“Eric’s calling,” I tell her, my tone harsher than I intend.

My peripheral vision catches Brooks grinning at me. Yeah. He knows exactly how I feel about this.

“You’d better get that,” I prompt.

Her expression is suspiciously stricken. She snatches the phone and hits the Ignore button.

“Who’s Eric?” Brooks attempts to sound casual but fails. I’m glad he asked before I did, though, and the wink he gives me reveals it was intentional. I nod back, appreciating the solid.

“Nobody,” she says tightly.

Well, that tells me nothing. Is she seeing somebody else? Does she have a roster of guys she hooks up with, a bench full of McCarthys?

The hot jealousy burning my gut is not a pleasant sensation. I’m a competitive guy, but I’ve never competed for the affections of a woman before. Because no woman has ever chosen another man over me. That sounds pretentious and I don’t care. The idea of Brenna seeing other dudes is not okay with me.

Which creates another first: I’ve never been the one to initiate the are-we-exclusive conversation. How does one even bring that up?

When her phone buzzes with a voice-mail alert, I feel even testier. “Are you going to check that?”

“No need. I know what he wants.”

The unwelcome jealousy burns hotter. “Is that so?”

“Yup. Whose turn is it now?”

“Mine,” Brooks offers. But as he sorts the tiles on his tray, Brenna’s phone rings for a second time.

And then, after she ignores it, a third time.

“Just answer it,” I mutter.

With a heavy breath, she reaches for the phone again. “Eric, hey. I told you I don’t have time for—” Her sentence comes to an abrupt halt. When she speaks again, concern has softened her voice. “What do you mean you don’t know where you are?”

Brooks and I exchange a wary look.

“Slow down, slow down. You’re not making any sense. Where are you?” There’s a long silence. “Okay, stay put,” she finally says, and I swear her voice cracks a little. She blinks rapidly, as if fighting tears. “I’ll be right there.”

26

Jake

“Thank you so much for doing this.”

Brenna’s voice is barely audible, and she’s sitting directly beside me. The rain is nothing more than drizzle now, the brunt of the storm having finally blown past us, but beyond the windshield, several streetlights still aren’t functioning. I’m behind the wheel of the Mercedes, because Brooks had too much to drink. He’s in the backseat, though, after insisting on tagging along.