More than Friends

He takes my hand with a sigh. The Baldwin twins go at each other like this for hours. Sometimes, one of our teammates who live in the house with us has to break up their arguments. The one thing every member of the Baldwin family has in common is their tempers, Kat included.

After thirty minutes of non-stop fighting, I get Theo and Tucker to stop yelling at each other long enough to drag their asses to the Student Activity Center to meet Kat. The scents of herbs and fried foods assault my nostrils as we go through each station. I hadn’t realized how hungry I was until we got here.

We fill our trays in a hurry and set off toward the table in the back of the room, the one where we normally meet up with our friends. Kat peeks up from her plate, locking onto me. She pats the seat next to her.

Now, she’s the one beckoning me. We still joke about the day we met. Back then, I used my usual tricks on her, not even thinking that they wouldn’t work on a girl like Kat. She has me so whipped that sometimes even I wonder why we never took our relationship to the next step. Until last night.

But I have to set those feelings aside for the sake of our friendship. As much as I would love to explore more with Kat, it could never work with her brothers around to block us at every turn. She’s never even had a boyfriend because of them.

I sit next to Kat and slide my chair into the table.

“What did you get?” Kat scans my plate. “I’m still hungry.”

“Cheesesteak and fries. You want half of it?”

She lifts a fry from my plate and stuffs it into her mouth, speaking between bites. “Maybe just a bite of your steak.”

“You owe me a few bucks for this joker,” Tucker says to Kat, pointing at Theo with a goofy smile.

She pulls a twenty out of her back pocket and throws it across the table at Tucker. He picks it up, looking victorious.

“I’m not a joker,” Theo says, defensive, but he’s too busy eating his food to argue.

Kat and her younger brothers only have a one year age difference between them, but you would assume by their behavior that the twins are years apart from Kat. While she’s mature and sensible, they’re both wild and think after they act. Tucker surprises me on occasion, but that doesn’t happen often.

Then, there’s Duke and Austin, who are over five years older than Kat and rough around the edges. The Baldwin’s are a dynamic bunch. Never a dull moment around any of them.

I break my steak in half and give it to Kat. Instead of taking it from me, she grabs my hand and sinks her teeth into the sandwich. She pins me down with an intense stare, making it harder for me to focus on anything other than her face. I watch each movement of her mouth, thinking of how her lips felt pressed against mine. I miss being that close to her already.

Does she feel it, too?

Can we make this work between us?

For better or worse, things have changed between us. I cannot deny the connection I have to Kat. It was always there. But how do we move forward?

Chapter 5

Junior Year

Dean

Sitting on the bed next to me, with her back against the wall and her legs pulled up to her chest, Kat reaches for the remote between us. She turns off the TV, leaving the room in silence. We were in the middle of another one of our crappy movie marathons.

She takes my hand in hers and tugs hard enough to bring my attention to her beautiful face. “Dean, would you be my first?”

My heart speeds up, beating out of my chest. I have no idea how to answer Kat. After spending months working out my feelings for Kat, things had finally returned to normal. I thought our summer apart had healed the old wounds, only for her to rip them open again.

“You mean sex?” I have to clarify just in case I am way off base.

She nods. “Yeah. Is that a weird thing to ask you?”

“Where is this coming from?”

“I’ve been thinking a lot about sex, and I want to do it, you know.”

“And you want it to be with me? Are you sure, Kitten? That’s a huge responsibility. You should have sex with someone you love.”

She shakes her head, smiling. “I love you, silly. That’s why I want it to be with you. If I make the mistake of having sex with some random dude, I will regret it later. But I would never regret my choice if it was with you.”