“Not saying that. Just saying unless we’re talking some kind of bridge club, I can’t really picture Carly at a club in her current state.”
JC laughed into his fist. “She might be preggo, but she’s smoking hot.”
“Tell her husband you think that, dickweed.”
JC just kept right on laughing.
Lily rolled her eyes at both of us. “They asked me if I wanted to go, and I said I would. I figured I’d ask you guys, but if you’re not interested—”
JC sobered. “Both of us?”
Lily nodded. “Yeah. Not like I can ask one and not the other. I’m with—” She fiddled with the tails of JC’s shirt. “I’m with both of you.”
Nodding, I swallowed. She was so frigging sweet and brave. So much braver than I was in a million ways. “We want to go.”
JC nodded. “Hell yeah.”
She smiled and cocked her head. “Really?”
“Absolutely.” I smiled back at her and forced away thoughts of what Jenna and Carly would think when they saw the three of us together. Or what rumors might be circulating by the following Monday at the gym.
For once, I was going to follow Lily’s example and stop being such a freaking coward.
“Yay. Awesome.” She giggled and pushed her hair out of her face. “God, does sex make you drunk? I haven’t had a drop tonight and I feel dumb.”
“You forgot good. Good sex can do that for sure.” I patted her thigh, revealed beyond the tails
of JC’s shirt. I was pretty sure she hadn’t put her panties back on, and trying to get a glimpse between her thighs was both a torture and a turn-on. “Then again, it might just be fluid loss from going and going for,” I picked up my phone and swiped it back on, “Christ, five hours? No wonder we were fucking starving.”
“Five hours? Oh, shit.” Lily snatched my phone, her mouth falling open. “It’s two-thirty.”
Our eyes met and I groaned. “Damn, your dad.”
“You can say that again.” She scrambled up, nearly upending the food boxes and pulling the sheets off JC’s messy bed.
I rose to pick up my jeans. I wasn’t naked, but damn close to it. Sitting around in my boxers in front of JC and Lily felt entirely too natural already.
Shockingly, JC hadn’t bothered with clothes at all. And Lil might as well have been nude for all the good that shirt did to hide her assets.
“He’s probably waiting up. You know he worries.” Lily tugged on her panties and jeans. She really had been naked under the shirt. Even in the midst of Lance-related stress, I winced as my cock throbbed at the missed opportunity.
JC rolled over on his belly and propped his head in his hands. He sure as hell didn’t seem concerned. “Yeah, what’s up with that? Your pops realizes you’re almost twenty-one, right?”
She glanced at me and we exchanged a look. I’d always wondered if JC was just as blasé about the situation with Lily as he appeared to be about everything else, but all at once, I realized he didn’t know. She’d never told him about what had happened to her mother. She’d also probably never mentioned what had happened to my dad, or how we’d come to know each other and bonded over our shared losses.
Part of me wanted to tell him. Now that we were all involved, for lack of a better word, it didn’t seem like something he should not know. But it wasn’t my secret to tell. Lily’s part of it, anyway. And telling mine led right back to hers. Our lives had been woven together for so long it was almost impossible to extricate them.
I didn’t want to.
“Her dad’s a cop,” I said, answering for her. I picked up my shirt and pulled it over my head. “You know how cops are. Lily’s his only daughter, and it’s just been the two of them for so long.”
“What happened to your mom?”
Her throat bobbed and she shook her head, shoving her feet into her shoes. “We gotta go. He’ll be freaking out, even though he knows I’m with Emerson. He can’t help it.”
JC rolled out of bed, his face devoid of any expression. I’d begun to realize he was plenty capable of feeling more than he let on, but damn, he was good at pulling a stone face. “So Emerson’s like the get-out-of-jail-free card?” Before she could answer, he cupped her face and gave her a long, lingering kiss. “Dream of me.”
When he finally pulled back, she blinked up at him. “Um. Yeah. Okay.” She blew out a breath. “Wow.”