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until I overestimated the size of the bed while trying frantically to untangle myself. Instead of my hand landing at the edge, it hit nothing but air—propelling me ass over teakettle onto the floor.
    “ Goddamn it,” I huffed out, watching him round the bed. “Give me my phone!”
    “ You okay, Ladybug?” he asked with a grin, the phone still pressed to his ear. “I thought you wanted me to answer it.”
    “ Are you out of your fucking mind?” I growled, imagining the earful that Callie must be giving him on the other end of the line. “Give me the phone and put some fucking pants on!”
    “ Damn, baby, you always going to be this pissy in the morning?”
    I dropped my head against the carpet and screeched in frustration. He knew exactly what he was doing by calling me pet names and insinuating that he ’d be seeing me in the mornings. Any chance of keeping things quiet between us had just been shot to hell.
    “ Yeah, sister . . . Okay . . . I’ll see you tonight, then. Here’s Farrah.” He ended his conversation, reaching down to help me up off the floor as I scowled at him.
    “ You’re dead to me,” I told him, grabbing the phone out of his hand.
    “ Get off the phone and come back to bed, Ladybug,” he whispered loud enough for his sister to hear, then wrapped his long fingers around the sides of my head to pull me in for a deep kiss.
    I stood there stupidly watching his bare ass cross to the bed and crawl back in, the phone forgotten in my hand for almost a full minute before I snapped back to reality.
    “ Why the hell are you calling me before the sun is awake?” I asked my best friend, propping the phone between chin and shoulder as I grabbed some underwear and my last clean sundress from the top of my dresser.
    “ Nice try, asshole. Why is my brother answering your phone?” she asked incredulously.
    “ He doesn’t understand boundaries?”
    “ Why is he in our apartment before ‘the sun is awake’?”
    “ Why are any of us here, Callie?” I asked rhetorically. “Why are any of us here?”
    “ Why isn’t he staying at Gram’s?”
    “ He was jealous because he assumed—correctly, I might add—that Will would steal Gram’s attention away from him now that he’s been usurped as the baby of the family?”
    “ You’re an idiot.” She laughed.
    “ Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard it all before,” I said teasingly, grabbing a towel and turning on the shower before sitting down on the edge of the tub and dropping my head into my hands. “He came, he saw, he conquered.”
    “ No!”
    “ Oh yes. Apparently your baby brother has a thing for me.” I sighed, rubbing between my eyebrows with one finger to smooth the frown crease away.
    “ This is not news.”
    “ It was to me,” I grumbled.
    “ Does this mean—”
    I cut her off. “No more about me. What happened yesterday? Did you see Grease? Did he freak out? Fall to his knees and declare his undying love? Or did he go the pussy route and cry?”
    She laughed and kindly allowed me to change the subject without calling me out on it. Callie was one of the few people who could read me like a book, and she must have sensed I was freaking out.
    “ Yeah, I saw him.” She sighed. “It didn’t go so good, not at first, but we’re solid now.”
    “ How solid?” I asked cautiously.
    Callie and Grease ’s relationship had gone through more ups and downs than any I had ever heard of. Up until the night before, they hadn’t even talked in almost a year—a decision Callie had made while she was dealing with an assload of survivor’s guilt and PTSD.
    “ Pack-your-shit-because-we’re-moving-to-Oregon solid,” she answered giddily.
    “ No fucking way.”
    “ Yep. We want to move all of us up here this week.” She spoke quickly as if worried I’d interrupt. “But before you freak, I want to tell you that if you changed your mind about moving or you don’t want to go that soon, I won’t be mad. I won’t. I really want you with us,