HIM: Maise, seriously. We’ve all gotten drunk and done stupid shit.
HER: Wait. Was there more? What exactly did I do? And there’s no video evidence, is there?
HIM: So I take it you want me to delete the video of you singing ‘You Give Love A Bad Name’?
HER: I did NOT sing.
HIM: Are you sure? Are you really, really sure? How much would you wager on it?
HER: If I did sing, which I seriously doubt, it was an alcohol-induced mistake. Let’s just forget it ever happened.
A few minutes passed.
HER: Beckett. I’m serious… Delete and forget. I’m begging you.
HIM: Forget what? What am I forgetting? My mind is a blank.
HER: Dork.
HIM: Nerd.
PRESENT DAY
With Beckett this close, with hishand wrapped in my hair, making me want things I knew better than to want, it was hard to banish the old teenage dream of Beckett finally realizing he couldn’t live without me and getting down on a bended knee to ask me to be his forever.
But I’d learned the hard way that this ugly duckling was never going to be a swan. I wasn’t the princess that the prince searched the kingdom for so he could keep her.
Even now, what Beckett was proposing wasn’t because he actually wanted me—Maisey.
I’d just sworn to myself this morning I’d handle the disaster with Dad on my own. But for the first time in almost as long as I could remember, Beckett wasn’t just offering to help me. He was asking for help in return. After years of not knowing how to pay him back, I had an opportunity to do something.
With Fallon, it was different. The financial scales might forever be tipped in her direction, but emotionally, I’d been there for her when some pretty horrific things had hit her life. Beckett, on the other hand, had needed very little from me because he’d had a fully functioning father who’d given him the shoulder he’d needed.
What Beckett was asking of me now was a simple thing that would have a huge impact on his future. I couldn’t remember another time when he’d needed something this big and asked me to help him.
How could I say no?
But would I survive this particular request? Because if we did this, it wasn’t going to end in a happily ever after like in my romance books. Beckett believed love always failed and used every broken relationship he came across as evidence. He had no desire to challenge his hypothesis by seeking out success stories. Even if, by some miracle, he changed his mind about love and marriage, he wouldn’t want it with me. I was his friend. The sidekick. The anti-princess.
“You hate the idea so much you can’t even consider it?” Beckett asked, and when I looked up, the plea in his eyes was nearly my undoing.
My pulse pounded so hard and so loud I was certain he could hear it. My heart and my conscience were warring with each other.
I could barely keep my barriers up with him now. I barely kept our friendship at the level it was destined to remain without ruining it with my desire for more. What would living in his house, completely surrounded by him, brushing up against him in the kitchen, flirting with him as we passedin the hall, do to me?
The plea in his eyes vanished, only to be replaced with a twinkle, and I realized I was in even more trouble. I couldn’t resist his dimple on top of everything else.
“You afraid, my Maisey-girl?” he teased. “Afraid you won’t be able to keep your hands off?”
I forced back the panic, looked pointedly at his fingers still wrapped in my hair, and tossed back, “If anyone can’t keep their hands off, it’s clearly you.”
He let go, holding his hands up as he stepped back with a grin.
“Hands off from here on out.”
I rolled my eyes, and he chuckled.
“You don’t believe I can keep my hands to myself?” he taunted. “How about every time I touch you, I read one of your romance books, and every time you touch me, you owe me a meal?”