“Every time we were together, it felt like making love. Every time. All the time. Every night,” I say, and her green eyes twinkle instantly, as if they’ve been lit up by my words. “That’s because I fell in love with you before we even slept together.”
“You did?” she asks, her voice feather-soft and full of wonder. I recognize the sound because it’s how I feel when I look at her.
“I’m crazy about you. I want Swedish Fish with you all the time. I don’t want to be on the other side of the wall in an apartment with you.” I wave toward downtown, where Max lives. “And I definitely don’t want to be all the way on the other side of the city. Right now, it feels like a million miles separate us, and I can’t stand it.”
“I can’t stand it, either,” she says, her voice shaking, and she steps closer. I set the flowers on the nearest table and take her hands in mine.
I meet her gaze. Her green eyes are the only ones I want to get lost in. “I want to be the one you come home to and wake up to. I want to buy toilet paper for you, and go to Bed Bath & Beyond to shop for sheets for a bed that we share.” Her lips quiver, and her shoulders tremble as I go on. “I want to come home to find you in an apron that makes you even more impossible to resist, and I don’t want to ever resist you again.”
She nods over and over, tears slipping down her cheeks. And everything is right in the world again. Everything is miraculous. Everything is good once more because what I thought she was feeling in the cooking class is true. It’s clear. It’s real.
“Don’t resist me.” She grabs the neck of my shirt. “I love you so much.”
And my heart, it doesn’t just pump blood through the body now. It’s a rocket, and it soars straight through the atmosphere and keeps going. It’s no longer an organ that simply sustains all the vital functions in the body. It’s the one that plays the most vital role of all—loving her.
I dip my mouth to hers, tasting her sweetness, savoring the closeness. Her kiss is cupcake and frosting, sex and love. It’s everything that turns me on, and everything I need to be happy.
Her.
I’ve missed it, and I can’t get enough. I kiss her deeper, threading my hand in her hair, then at last letting go.
When we break the kiss, I feel as if I’m floating. As if this is my new normal. And I’m so damn glad I told her, because the chance to be with the one you want—the one who wants you the same damn way—is worth the risk.
I run the backs of my fingers along her soft cheek. “The thing is, I think I’ve been in love with you for a long time, Josie. I think I was falling for you since before I left the country. Now that I’m back, both my brother and your brother laughed at me when I told them I loved you, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.”
Her smile is as wide as the sky. “I’ve been crazy about you for a long time, too, and I think it took living together for my heart to hit my brain over the head and make me realize it fully.”
“Yeah?” I smile dopily. I don’t ever want to come down from this high.
She ropes her arms around my neck, her fingers playing with the ends of my hair, like she did that night on the train. “Last night I was looking back through my recipes—ones I’ve written out in the last few months. I wrote a bunch about you, and it was kind of obvious when I read them that I’ve had a big thing for you for a while.”
I grind against her for a second. “I’ve got a big thing for you,” I say, and she laughs. Then I add more seriously, “I’d love to see those someday. Your recipes.”
“I’d love to show them to you. This morning, I wrote a coffee recipe with cinnamon.”
A new sort of happiness floods my chest because I know why this girl likes cinnamon. I love being privy to all the quirks of Josie. From tuna to cinnamon, from sharing her heart to sharing her home, from sixty-nine to self-love. “Because cinnamon makes you feel like you can do anything?”
She nods. “And today, I wanted the courage to tell you how I felt. Then you showed up and said the same.”
I laugh lightly. “Were we just stupid for not saying a thing before?”
She shakes her head. “No. I think we both loved each other too much as friends to risk losing the other person. But then, I think being apart from you was its own kind of loss. That’s why I told you I had something for you. Something new I made.”
She hands me a bakery bag, the kind she’s always given me, and I’m floored once more by this woman. Josie’s always giving me gifts, and I can’t lie—it makes me outrageously happy to be the recipient.
I read the note first. “Josie’s All-In Chocolate Peanut Butter Brownies,” I say with a smile.
“Credit given where credit is due. They were your idea.”
Then I read the recipe that’s printed on the note.
* * *
Ingredients
2 cups chocolate chips
1 cup butter
1/2 cup peanut butter
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup white sugar
3 eggs, beaten
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
* * *
Directions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees and grease a baking dish as you prepare to lay your heart on the line.
Melt the chocolate chips, butter, and peanut butter together, like how everything melted when you fell in love with Chase. Stir frequently to avoid burning. Yes, you were worried about this before, but now there’s something bigger at stake.
Stir vanilla, flour, sugar, eggs, baking soda, and salt into the chocolate mixture. Pour batter into baking dish. This is the brand-new blend, and nothing is separated anymore. Time to accept that love and friendship and sex and happiness have all come together.
Bake brownies in the preheated oven until ready. Cool to room temperature before cutting into squares. Serve to the one guy you want—the one you hope wants you the same way.
* * *
I look up from the paper and at my girl.
She’s mine.
“Does this mean I can have the brownie now and eat it, too?”
A naughty glint flickers in her eyes, and lust clambers through me. I half want to kick myself for not telling her I loved her sooner, but I know we came to this on our terms, in the right time, once the friendship alone was no longer enough.
I reach inside the bag, break off a corner of the treat, and eat it. I moan in culinary delight. “This is the second-best thing I’ve ever tasted.”
“What’s first?”
I curl my hand around her head. “You.”
Then I kiss her, and she’s everything I missed, everything I want, and everything I love.
She kisses me back with a tenderness and a fierceness that I now know comes from her whole heart. Josie’s always given all of herself, even when she tried to hold back. I once thought I could keep everything in separate drawers, but maybe I’m not that different from her after all.
This blend the two of us have going on is pretty damn good. I like life better when we’re together.
Right now there’s something I’d like even more, and that's all of her.
I break the kiss and glance around the shop. “How many health codes would we break if we got it on at this place?”
She smiles. “Come to my office.”
I wiggle my eyebrows as she locks the front door. “I like the sound of that.”
Taking my hand, she guides me to a cubicle in the back. She perches on the edge of a desk that’s covered in papers and envelopes, presumably invoices and bills. She pulls me close, and I slam my mouth to hers, kissing her hard and rough, the kind of kiss that leads to only one thing.
Soon, I lift her skirt, tug down her panties, and slide inside.
Her name is a dirty growl on my lips. “Josie. I fucking love you.”
She draws me impossibly closer and whispers in my ear, “I fucking love you, too. And, yes, it was always that way f
or me, too.”
We’re fast, and we’re frenzied, and soon we’re both over the edge.
After, I help her close the bakery for the night and we head for the door. “Wait.” I stop at the table. “I have a gift for you, too.”
I hand her the flowers. “You might be thinking, ‘He’s not very creative, since he gave me these before.’ But last time I gave you flowers, you said they’d make our place cheery. This time I got them for you because I want to live with you again. In a new place. Just for us. One you can make cheery with these flowers.” Her eyes seem to sparkle as she waits for me to say more. “Would you like to live with me again? As my girlfriend?”
She takes my hand. “I would love to.”
Epilogue
Five months later
* * *
The apartment hunt didn’t last long this time.
Nothing was cursed. No one was crazy. I didn’t have to sell a spleen or a kidney, either.
As it turns out, all I had to do was remove a piece of a chandelier from a guy’s forehead and then stitch it up without a trace.
Kevin hooked me up. Who knew that one day Aquaman would stumble into my ER with a three-inch shard of glass in his forehead, and a beautiful bond would form. I’d fix his face and send him on the path to safer sexcapades. He would wind up engaged and return the favor by connecting me with some of his real estate contacts. One of his real estate guys found a one-bedroom for us in Chelsea that costs an arm and a leg. But somehow we’re making it all work, doing our best every day.
Josie’s bakery is thriving. Her afternoon specials have lured in many new customers, and they’re loving her mini cinnamon buns, the chocolate peanut butter brownies, the candy sushi, and even the grapefruit macarons. Nothing with raisins, though. Thank the Lord.
But tonight, she’s not cooking.
I am.
Not gonna lie. Cooking has never been my forte. But learning has. I tracked down some recipes, watched a few videos, practiced a couple of times, and now I’m making her dinner.
I whip up the pasta primavera I’ve planned for the menu. It’s a simple dish, but it’s her favorite, and seeing as she treats me like a king in the kitchen, I want to treat her like a queen.
When she walks in the door to our home, she lifts her nose high and inhales. “Mmm,” she says in a sexy purr. “Smells good. Somebody’s getting lucky tonight.”
I leave the kitchen, wrap an arm around her waist, and kiss her. “Had I only known cooking dinner was the way to get in your pants, I’d have done it sooner.”
She laughs and drops another kiss on my lips. “Can you imagine? You’d be getting it three times a day instead of once or twice.”
Yeah, we’re regulars.
Every night. Sometimes every morning, too, even though we rarely get out of bed at the same time. But that doesn’t hinder the pursuit of orgasms, since synchronized wake-up calls aren’t necessary for sleepy morning sex, and that’s a habit we both enjoy.
After she sets down her purse and washes her hands, we eat the dinner I made. When we’re done, I clear my throat. “Josie, there’s something I want to tell you.”
Her eyes widen. “Yes?”
I clasp my hand over hers, then frown. “It’s about dessert. I have bad news.”
She goes along with my trumped-up concern. “You baked a cake and it fell? You used too much salt in the brownies? Wait. No. Don’t tell me you made something with raisins.”
I shudder. “Never. But I want to be truthful with you.” I inhale deeply, piling it on. “The crème brûlée on the menu? I didn’t make it with a crème brûlée torch. In fact, crème brûlée is really fucking hard to make. Confession—I bought it.”
She cracks up and runs her hand through my hair. “I forgive you, and I won’t even throat-punch you.”
I gesture to the kitchen. “Any chance I can trouble you to grab it, though? I just need to gather up the plates.”
“Of course.” She rises and heads to the kitchen, and with lightning speed, I race to the couch, grab a board from underneath it, and carry it ever-so-carefully with my steady hands to the table.
When I set it down, every tile I laid out earlier is still in place.
And when Josie emerges from the kitchen, I’m in place, too—down on one knee, with a jewelry box in my hand.
She gasps and points to the table, her mouth falling open. She gawks at the Scrabble board. The words on it don’t connect with each other like in a crossword puzzle. But they don’t have to. I’m not trying to win a double-word score. I want to win her heart forever, and that’s why four words, and four words only, are spelled out. I say them out loud. “Will you marry me?”
I flip open the box and present a sparkling diamond ring. “I love you madly, Josie Hammer. Will you be more than my roommate, more than my girlfriend? You’re already my best friend. Will you be my wife?”
“Yes,” she says, and throws her arms around me, kissing me as tears fall down her cheeks. “I can’t wait for you to be my husband.”
“Me, too,” I say, taking out the diamond.
She holds out her hand, and I slide the ring on her finger. “I guess I’m the one getting lucky tonight,” she says with a joyful grin on her face.
The same is true for me, especially since every night, after we engage in our favorite hobby, she lets my hand be Lyle Lyle.
Soon, that hand will have a ring on it.
Another Epilogue
A little later
* * *
Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that you’ve fallen madly in love with your best friend. You’d thank your lucky stars you took the chance on living together, right?
If we hadn’t been stuck between the rock and the hard place of New York City real estate, I’m not sure we would have combusted the way we did. Living in a mere six hundred square feet with Josie made it impossible to miss what was right in front of me—the woman of my dreams.
I used to think I was the king of compartmentalizing. I thought I could handle romance the way I have to treat my emotions about a patient. But moving in with my best friend taught me that some things are better when they’re not separate.
Like desires and actions.
Lust and feelings.
Love and sex.
One used to go here. The other went there. But everything collided head-on with Josie, smashing together in a potent blend. Looking back, am I ever glad she needed a boob friend the night she slipped into my bed. That one night led to this great love, and now she’s my wife.
Sometimes she calls me the full package, the thing she said she was looking for. “I love your brain, and your heart, and your smile, and I especially love this part,” she’ll say, then she’ll get a little frisky. Which is fine by me. “But most of all, I love that you’re my terrible-singing, innuendo-delivering, sweets-loving, big-hearted Doctor McHottie husband who takes care of me in every way.”
And you know, I’ve got it pretty bad for my bold and daring, bright and beautiful, heart-on-her-sleeve, Scrabble-loving, cherry-scented wife who takes care of me, too.
I could say she’s the full package, and that’s all well and good.
But what she truly is . . . is a gift.
* * *
THE END
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Curious about Chase’s siblings? Max has a story to tell in JOY RIDE, available everywhere! And Mia gets her own story in HARD WOOD, out now!
Grab the final two books in the BIG ROCK series to complete your romantic comedy adventure! JOY RIDE and HARD WOOD!
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Also by Lauren Blakely
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HARD WOOD, a USA Today Bestselling standalone romantic comedy!
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THE V CARD, a USA Today Bestselling sinfully sexy romantic comedy!
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The New York Times and USA Today Bestselling Seductive Nights series including Night After Night, After This Night, and One More Night
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