“You’re home early,” I say, and Ihatehow guilty I sound.
He doesn’t blink. “It’s ten-thirty-four.”
His voice is controlled. Too controlled. The way it gets when he’s working really hard to keep something in.
I’ve learned to hear what he’s not saying.
“Oh.” I fumble my phone just to confirm it. As if he’d lie. Caleb doesn’t lie. He doesn’thaveto. He does things by the book, always. Him and his goddamn rules.
Unlike me.
Z smirks and throws an arm over my shoulder like this is all a joke. “Time flies when you’ve got good company.”
Z is doing this on purpose, pulling me against his chest, all casual and cocky. Marking territory that was never his to begin with.
I snarl under my breath and duck out from under Z’s arm, glaring at him like he just pissed on my shoes.
“What the hell, Z?”
But he just smiles like he’s already won.
And Caleb…
Caleb hasn’t moved. But something about the stillness is different now. Sharper. Like every muscle in his body is locked down to keep from doing something he’ll regret.
His eyes don’t leave the spot where Z’s arm just was.
“I’d say get a room,” Caleb says, voice low and razor-sharp, “but I don’t think Mom would approve of you two fucking in the basement.”
“Caleb!” I snap, stunned.
What the actual fuck?
That’s not him. Caleb doesn’t say shit like that. He doesn’t get crude. Or territorial. Or cruel.
But standing there in the soft spill of light from the kitchen windows, his face shadowed and jaw clenched, he looks… different. Unbuttoned. Unleashed. Like maybe the Golden Retriever has teeth after all.
Too bad Z’s always been a Doberman.
Z just laughs, slow and mean, like helivesfor this kind of chaos. “Happy to test out that theory.”
I almost scream.
“Fuck both of you,” I growl, storming up the back steps and yanking the sliding door shut with enough force to make the glass rattle.
THIRTY
CALEB
I shouldn’t have come home early.
The second I opened that sliding door and saw Harper with Z—his hand holding hers to his chest, her body tucked against his like it belonged there—I felt something crack inside my chest.
And then I said that thing.
That fucking thing.
“I don’t think Mom would approve of you two fucking in the basement.”