Made for You (The Best Mistake 2)

“I’m nothing but a game to him,” Brynn said quietly. “He’s disliked me since high school, and that dislike has only been fueled by the fact that I’m one of the few women that wouldn’t let him into my pants.”

Except that one time…

“What if he did care?” Sophie said casually. “Hypothetically.”

Brynn shook her head. It didn’t even compute. “Has he had a serious girlfriend ever? Or even a woman he’s been faithful to for more than a couple weeks?”

Sophie became suddenly fascinated with the dip, and Brynn pounced on her. “See? You know exactly why someone like me would never be with someone like him. I want a ring, and babies, and a white picket fence. He wants none of those things.”

“And yet he moved to the suburbs,” Jenna emphasized.

“Next door to you,” Sophie added more quietly. “There’s got to be a reason for that.”

Brynn rotated her shoulders in irritation. “Yeah, and I’m sure there was, but not in the romantic way you guys are trying to make it out to be. He and I started this game back when we were fifteen. He’s come back because it’s time to finish it.”

“I wonder who wins,” Jenna added thoughtfully.

Brynn swallowed around what felt suspiciously like a lump in her throat. “I’m beginning to think neither of us.”

* * *

Brynn was somehow unsurprised to find Will rummaging around in her kitchen at the crack of dawn on Monday morning.

She blinked sleepily at him, gratefully accepting the mug of coffee he handed over.

“How’d you get in? I moved my key.”

Will grabbed a plastic brown blob off the counter and waved it at her. “The fake-dog-poop key holder? Really?”

“What? No burglar is going to risk picking up a pile of poop to see if it’s fake.”

“He doesn’t have to, he can just give it a whack with a stick and hear metal rattling against plastic.”

“Damn,” Brynn said, slumping into her kitchen chair as she tried to blink off the fog of sleep.

“Maybe you should just forgo the spare-key route,” Will said as he rummaged in her cupboards for a box of cereal. “Something tells me you’ve never forgotten your key in your life.”

She didn’t deny it. “I like to be prepared.”

“Shocker.” Will held up the box of cereal. “Whole grain, organic, no sugar?”

“It’s healthy,” Brynn said.

Will shook his head and poured some into a cereal bowl before pulling the milk out of the fridge. “Wow, nonfat. Really living on the edge.”

Will unceremoniously handed her the bowl, and her gaze caught on the fine hairs of his forearm before traveling up to where his navy T-shirt strained around his bicep.

She tore her eyes away and accepted the cereal even though she wasn’t hungry. At least not for food.

“You know, I had high hopes for you when you first started on this kick,” he said, grabbing his own coffee mug and joining her at

the table. “You were all leather and dark hair dye and tattoos. But I’ve gotta say, you’re totally posing.”

Brynn munched on her cereal. “What were you expecting? Motorcycles and genital piercings?”

His coffee cup paused halfway to his mouth. “Keep talkin’.”

She ignored this and jabbed her spoon at him. “A vacation from oneself is entirely relative. For some people, ‘edgy’ might be skydiving. For others, it’s something as simple as going to a restaurant and dining alone.”