exchange a look across the room because we both know we’re sunk. We could call it now and just give it to Ethan and Blanca, but we’re into it now too. We’ll give it our best shot, even if defeat is headed our way.
After we’ve all filled it out, each of us takes our turn in the hot seat. Blanca goes five for five, Ethan four for five, so we’d have to be perfect to win.
Seth does this pretend punching in the air thing like he’s a boxer. “Give it to me, Knox.”
“Favorite physical feature?” Knox asks.
Seth’s eyes fall over me for only a moment because we’re being timed. “Um… lips.”
My cheeks heat. Is he thinking about the kiss we shared too?
“Least?”
“Hair.” He looks at me quickly. “Only because it blocks your face.”
Blanca looks at me and I can’t decipher her look—curiosity maybe.
Knox asks my favorite color and favorite movie, which thankfully, we did discuss in Seth’s bedroom.
“Last one, what frightens your lovebird the most?”
Seth looks at me, searching and I hold my breath. He’ll be five for five if he tells them what I said in his room when I was a crying mess. We can win this if he wants. I wrote the real answer on my sheet, as hard as it was, but the idea of hearing it spoken aloud in a room full of people I just met makes me feel entirely too vulnerable.
Seth’s eyes remain on me when he speaks. “Spiders.”
Knox makes the noise that Seth got it wrong.
Blanca jumps up and down in victory. “We won! Which means no strippers, no Vegas, we’re going to a cabin in Maine!” She turns to me. “I do hope you join us, Evan.”
“Oh no.” I shake my head.
“Yes, you’re his plus one,” Sierra says. “I mean, you guys can’t screw anyone else while this arrangement is going on anyway.”
Of course her mind went there. Adrian’s mouth rarely leaves her neck.
Everyone starts cleaning up the game and talking about how surprised they are that we did so well for not knowing each other. My gaze searches out Seth. As though he feels my eyes on him, he looks in my direction.
I mouth thank you and he nods. Because he could have won and gone on whatever trip he wanted to, but he didn’t out me to a room of strangers.
And just like that, the trust I had when we were nine years old returns. It’s almost as if no time passed and the twenty years apart was just a blink. Except that the small boy with long skinny legs and big feet has grown into a sexy man.
Maybe the feud was the best thing that could have happened to us, because it would’ve been a travesty if I’d never fully appreciated the man in front of me and only thought of him as my best friend.
I’m not sure what to think of him in this moment.
Chapter Sixteen
Seth
After twenty years of absence from this home, I pull my car up along the curb of the Ericksons’ house. It’s only three blocks from where I grew up, but after I turned nine, it might as well have been a thousand miles. The easiest way to get to the grocery store means going past their house, but my mom quickly learned to go a few blocks out of the way to keep everyone’s mood as chipper as she could.
Knox pulls up behind me in his cop car.
Can you blame me? Of course I called my cop roommate to be my protector in case Evan’s dad pulls a gun on me.
I walk up to his driver’s side door and Knox rolls down the window. His partner, Lucas, sits at his side.
Knox smirks. “You have us until we get a call.”
“Do you really think he’s going to go after you?” Lucas asks.
My heart beats as though I snorted a line of coke five minutes ago, confirming that I am in fact scared shitless that Mr. Erickson might have a weapon with my name on it. I wouldn’t even put it past him to tackle me. His picture still lines the wall of Cliffton Heights High for his stellar linebacker skills.
“Yeah, I do,” I say. “The man hates our family, hates me, and I’m about to surprise him by asking him for his daughter’s hand in marriage when he doesn’t even know we’re dating.”
Knox glances at his partner. “Seth’s family owns Andrews Bagel Company, but the man in that house owns The Bagel Place.”
“Oh,