Perfectly Toxic (Sterling Shore 9)

“Yes, I’m dating someone,” I tell her quickly. “No, I’m not sick,” I lie. I don’t want my mother here when I’m sick. She still thinks it’s okay to give me a sponge bath when I run a fever, and that’s just not cool.

“Who’s the girl?” Mom asks. I swear I hear her grinning.

“You’ll meet her at the dinner. I’m not giving you her name before then, because you’ll research her to the point of creepy. Then you’ll ask her a thousand probing personal questions you shouldn’t know to ask.”

“I’d never,” she gasps.

“You did it to the nobody-girls I took to the company parties,” I remind her. “And I wasn’t even dating them.”

“But they were prospects,” she states, acting as though that makes it all okay.

My head feels like an anchor being tossed over a ship when I try to lean up and take a sip of water.

“If you break out that damn wedding album at the dinner, I’ll leave with her, and we won’t come back until you return to your sane, rational self.”

She sighs as though she’s disappointed. “I want grandbabies. You can’t blame a woman for that. I’m not getting any younger, Ethan Noles.”

“And on that note, I’m going to let you go. I’ll see you at the dinner.”

I cough again as she rattles off a list of things I need to do to woo—fucking woo?—my girl. Unbelievable.

When she reaches the part about writing a poem about the first time I saw her, I hang up. She should know by now that’s not me. If Bella wanted poetry, she wouldn’t be entangled with me.

My door opens, and I mumble a few curses while watching for whoever is invading my house right now. When Wren steps into view, I groan.

“Not now,” I grumble, wrapping a blanket around me like a damn baby.

I regret losing that numbness right now.

“I’m not here to raise hell,” he says, amused. “Why are you curled up in a blanket?”

“I’m sick.” Motherfucker, it sounds like I’m pouting.

“So I guess Bella rubbed off on you,” he goads, grinning like a cheeky asshole.

“Again, not fucking now.”

Groaning, I cover my eyes with my arm.

“So the partying is over? Good, because I’m tired of trying to keep up with people who just turned twenty-one.”

“Partying isn’t over. Bella is going to have fun with me. It’s part of our compromise.”

I can hear his disappointed look spreading over his face. I don’t have to see it.

“Look, I get that you want to have fun, but you can’t always have your cake and icing too. Bella is ready for something serious, and—”

“I do not want to talk chicks. Especially not right now. This thing with Bella is mine. Not yours.”

“Do you have to be such a dick when I’m trying to give you advice?” He sounds more like he’s mocking me than getting angry, so I flip him off, because Bella really has rubbed off on me and that’s her favorite gesture.

He laughs like he’s thinking the same thing, and I go back to ignoring him as my head crashes around like a ship lost at sea.

“Fine. I’ll come back when you’re less of an ass.”

Before I can repeat my last non-verbal response, I hear another voice in the house, and I groan loudly.