Make Me Yours (Bellamy Creek #2) - Melanie Harlow Page 0,28

be said. “This doesn’t have to change anything. I know we’re just friends.”

He exhaled. “You have no idea how relieved I am to hear you say that.”

“It’s the truth. Teenage crush aside, I think what happened tonight was just . . . letting off steam or something.” It wasn’t exactly the truth, but it was close enough. “We just got carried away.”

“Yeah.”

“Maybe it’s the wedding that has us all worked up,” I said, even though I’d been worked up over him my entire life.

“Maybe.”

“And the holidays,” I said. “Nothing makes you feel lonelier than pumpkin spice lattés and sweater weather. And wasn’t there a full moon tonight? No wonder we’re acting crazy.”

There it was again—that low, sexy laugh I wanted to wrap around me like a thick, cozy robe. “It was fun, though.”

“It was,” I agreed.

“So we’re okay?”

“We’re okay. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

We hung up, and I set my phone on the charger. Curling into a ball beneath the blankets, I lay awake wondering if he was still thinking about me, what it would be like to see him tomorrow, and if it would truly be possible to remain just friends after what we’d done.

Part of me hoped it would be . . . and part of me hoped it wouldn’t.

My alarm went off at seven.

For a moment, I was so groggy and disoriented I forgot what day it was, but then I remembered—Thanksgiving. I had to go downstairs and get the pies in the oven.

I sat up and stretched, my feet hanging off the side of the bed, my arms overhead. And then I remembered something else—Cole. What we’d done. The things we’d said.

My stomach whooshed, and I put both hands over it. Had it all been real? For a moment, I was scared it had been a dream. I grabbed my phone off the charger and checked my texts.

And there it was, right there on the screen. The entire night, from my first I’m ready before we’d gone to dinner, to my frantic I won’t be able to type and all the messages in between.

It had been real.

In a pleasant, sleepy haze, I tugged on some sweats, put my hair up, and wandered down to the kitchen. My mother, always an early riser, had already made a pot of coffee.

“Morning,” she said from where she sat at the kitchen table, wrapped in her robe, a Bellamy Creek Garage mug in her hand, a newspaper open in front of her.

“Morning.” I took a mug from the cupboard that said WAKE UP, TEACH KIDS, BE AWESOME on it and filled it up.

“How was dinner last night?”

“Fine.” I took the creamer from the fridge and added a little to my cup.

“Where’d you go?” She was trying to keep her tone casual, but her eyes had lit up like torches yesterday when I’d come home from the Mitchells’ house and told her Cole and I were going out for dinner. I’d tried to downplay it, even while my heart had done its best to ram right through my rib cage, but I could tell I’d set her wheels spinning.

“DiFiore’s,” I answered.

She glanced over at me, her eyes assessing me above the lenses of her reading glasses. “Fancy.”

“We were in the mood for Italian, that’s all.” I sipped my coffee. “It was very casual, just like I said it would be.”

“So, not a date?”

“Not a date.” Just dinner, drinks, and phone sex.

My mother returned her attention to the newspaper, picking up her mug. “See anyone you knew?”

“Nope.”

“How was the food?”

“Good.”

“Did Cole pay for dinner?” She didn’t even look at me, as if she wasn’t desperate for my answer. As if it wouldn’t, in her mind, tell her absolutely everything she needed to know.

“Yes, he did.”

“So it was a date, then.” Her tone was smug.

I sighed. “No, Mom. It wasn’t. I told you last night—Cole doesn’t date.”

She glanced at the ceiling, and I knew what was coming. She did that when she spoke to my late father. “You hear that, Hank? She says it wasn’t a date.” Then she looked at me again. “In our day, you see, we called it a date when a gentleman took a lady out for dinner.” She cocked her head, pretending to be confused. “What does your generation call it?”

I took another sip and set my cup on the counter. “We call it being friends,” I said, pulling my pie crusts and a brick of cream cheese from the refrigerator. “The end. I think I’m going to make