Ryan Hunter

fingers. “But not as long as she’s angry with me. She’ll never ever speak to me again if I screw this up.”
    I rolled onto my stomach, enjoying the warm sun on my back. “Dude, you better tell her fast. I think she will hate you more if she hears it from someone else.” That Mitchell brought Cloey here today made things a little more obvious. The guys on the team would be talking, even if they didn’t mean to hurt anyone.
    “I’ll get it sorted out with her in the next few days,” Tony said, but the sigh he heaved sounded like he dreaded nothing more than that little chat with his best friend.
    I smoothed out the bath-towel beneath me, folded my arms, and rested my chin in the crook, intending to catch up with some missed sleep. Tony had different plan. He rolled around to his front too, stared at me until I opened my eyes again.
    “Do you think Liza already suspects something?” he asked me.
    “Seriously, Mitchell, if she doesn’t, she must be blind. But you know, when you’re in love, there’s this denial button you just switch on, and everything is good for a while.”
    “You saying, she doesn’t want to believe it?”
    “I believe she could see you fool around with Summers in the water and kiss, and it only takes one word from you to convince her you had to give Cloey mouth to mouth reanimation.” As my own words sank in and made total sense, even I started to dread their little chat. Liza hurting was the last thing I wanted. “Anyway, how do you think this will work out? I mean once you dump the bomb on her? You can’t have a triangle relationship. The girls hate each other. They will always be jealous.”
    “I’ll make it work. Somehow.” Now he sounded like a sullen child that didn’t get the toy he’s seen in a shop window.
    “Tony, listen to me, because I’m your friend. And right now you don’t even start to understand how much of a good friend I am for telling you this. You can’t have the two of them. And in the long run, Liza Matthews is the better choice for you. One with a future.”
    Resting on his elbows, Tony laced his fingers in the sand and let his head hang. “I told you that it’ll never be like that between Liz and me.”
    Fucking damn, I hated myself for saying this. “If you don’t want to lose her, you have to think about taking her as your girlfriend. Because—She. Loves. You. And I’ve known you long enough to see that you do, too.” I growled, clamping my teeth together. “And now go away. I want to sleep.” And not totally destroy my flickering chance with Liza.
    But then I probably did the right thing. If there would ever be an us for Liza and me, I wanted to be the only one in her thoughts and not fight against something that wouldn’t happen for her, anyway. They needed to get this thing straight between them or else I’d be the one hurting in the end when they both realized later they were meant for each other. I didn’t think I would survive getting myself lost in Liza and then losing her to someone else. So however things would develop between us, I wouldn’t kiss her until she knew the truth about Mitchell and Summers.

Chapter 7
     
    BEFORE I WENT to bed that night, I set the alarm on my cell phone to four thirty. That gave me enough time to dress and get over to Liza’s house before five. Then I stripped down to my boxers, turned off the light, and climbed into my bed. The window was wide open, and I could hear the crickets in our garden. It wasn’t their noise that kept me from sleeping, it was thinking about who had slept next to me in this bed last night.
    I had never thought it possible that a couple of days could make such a damn difference. Suddenly, this bed felt way too big to sleep in it alone.
    Scooting back to lean against the headrest, I switched my nightstand light on and hugged a pillow to my chest. With my chin pressed into the feathers, I scanned the familiar room around me. Though nothing in here had changed in the previous two years, it now felt empty. Something was missing. A pair of apple green eyes staring at me. A smile. The sound of Liza’s even breaths in the dark.
    I wanted her back with me. I wanted to be the first thing she thought of in the morning and be the last to tell her goodnight. I wanted all of her. And goddammit, I was so tired of waiting.
    With the light turned off again, I remained sitting in my bed for a long while. In fact, I must have fallen asleep that way, because when the alarm went