over to his mom’s for a few hours of sleep.
“I did very well on my psych rotation,” Dillon informed him.
“You must be rusty, ’cause you’re way off. I don’t need Avery to be in love with me. She doesn’t even need to like me. But if she wants to keep kissing me, I’m not going to argue.”
“You need everyone to love you,” Max said. “You’ve always gotten off on being ‘such a great guy.’”
“The air quotes make you seem sarcastic,” Jake said drily.
Max laughed. “I don’t want to seem sarcastic. I want it to be very clear that I’m being sarcastic.”
“You’d think some of my greatness would start rubbing off on you guys eventually, wouldn’t you?” Jake asked. “But no. I’m still the lone good guy in this bunch.”
They just looked at him.
Dammit, they were right. He needed to leave Avery alone.
He sighed. “I’m satisfied. She was totally into me today.” Addictingly so. But it was enough. It had to be enough. “That’s all I needed to know.”
Max nodded. “Good deal. No more sugar. We’re both on a strict diet for the rest of our stay.”
Dillon and Jake both froze.
“You’re both on a diet?” Dillon asked.
“No more sugar?” Jake followed up.
Max nodded. “Bree kissed me.”
“Bree?” Dillon asked.
“Kissed you?” Jake added.
Max and Bree had known each other all their lives. They’d grown up friends, living next door to each other and sharing a variety of interests like dirt bikes and baseball. They’d tried dating in high school, but apparently knowing each other so well for so long meant there wasn’t much room for excitement or romance. They’d broken up after only a couple of months and had gone back to being friends.
Max nodded, looking less than thrilled. “She was out watching the twister with me. Got a little close for comfort, so I threw her in a ditch and got on top of her. Saved her pretty ass and got my head bashed in the process.”
“You got your head bashed?” Dillon demanded, coming out of his chair.
“It was just a flying branch,” Max protested as Dillon grabbed his head in both hands. “Ow! Fuck, Doc,” he said as Dillon probed Max’s scalp with his fingers.
“You got stitches.” Dillon let Max go.
“Yep. No big deal.”
“Your head is the hardest of any I know,” Dillon said, still frowning. “Stitches and possible concussions are not ‘Oh, by the way’ topics of conversation, though, got it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“That’s Dr. Sir to you,” Dillon said. “Dumbass,” he muttered under his breath.
Max rolled his eyes.
“Are you going to tell us more about you and Bree?” Jake asked.
“Was it good?” Dillon asked.
“Of course it was good,” Max said, looking miserable. “Too good. It’s so damned . . .” He sighed. “Complicated.”
Jake knew all about complicated. “But it was good?” he asked. “That’s something.”
Max shook his head. “It’s not anything. It’s just Bree being Bree. She’s an adrenaline junkie. The storm got her all riled up, and she mistook that rush for other kinds of . . . excitement.”
Bree was, most definitely, an adrenaline junkie. She climbed mountains and went parasailing and jumped out of airplanes. Jake wasn’t at all surprised to find that she’d wanted to go storm chasing with Max and that it had gotten her going.
“You’d better be careful,” Jake said with a grin. “Tornadoes in Chance have a way of stirring up stuff you don’t want stirred up.” He was only half kidding. He’d been stirred up about Avery for a year now because of the last tornado, and this one definitely hadn’t helped things. “I kissed a girl during a tornado in Chance, and look at how messed up I am.” Getting Avery out of his system didn’t seem possible.
“People do crazy, uncharacteristic things when they’re in danger or feel threatened,” Dillon said.
“Exactly,” Max agreed with a nod.
But there was something in the way Dillon said it that made Jake suspicious. He knew these men almost better than he knew himself. Something was up with Dillon, too. “What happened with you?”
“Kit Derby,” Dillon said sullenly.
“Kit happened to you?” Max asked, perking up. “What’s that mean?”
“Kit Derby, a storeroom at the hospital, and her damned body lotion happened to me.”
“Whoa,” Max commented. “Body lotion?”
Jake agreed with the Whoa. “And?”
“We kissed.”
Max and Jake waited for more. Dillon said nothing.
“Jesus, Dillon, what the fuck happened?” Max demanded.
“She smelled good and we were in there alone and we . . . kissed.” Dillon did not look happy about it.
“Just kissed?” Jake asked.
Dillon nodded.
“Well, that’s . . . okay.”
Except that