After dropping Peyton off at her hotel and Beau at his parents’ house, I made my way across town to Masyn’s. Peyton might not know our history and Beau might be full of shit, but I couldn’t let this keep going on. Two days without my best friend at my side was two days too long. The entire way there, I psyched myself up for what I wanted to say, what I needed to say. She could very well shoot me down, but I’d never know if I didn’t try. And if Beau and Peyton were right—although I wasn’t a hundred percent certain they were—then letting this go on only served to hurt the person I loved.

It wasn’t all that late when I got there, and all the lights were on in the house. Masyn was still up at ten o’clock. Even after several deep breaths, cutting the engine didn’t help calm my nerves before I stepped out of the truck. This should feel like a relief, but instead, I dreaded spitting the words out. The fear of rejection was real, even for someone who never had any problems attracting the opposite sex. It might even be worse because I knew I could have my pick of any girl in town—except the one I wanted. Since I never risked being turned down, I never had any hesitation approaching women. But here, sitting in her driveway, I had to prepare myself that she might not be interested in my confession, and I could be putting our friendship in jeopardy.

With one final deep breath, I opened the door and was nearly knocked over by the music blaring from Masyn’s house. It was a wonder no one had called the cops; I was surprised I hadn’t been able to hear it in the truck. Her angry hate lyrics blasted throughout the entire neighborhood, which was completely uncharacteristic of her. The emptiness in the pit of my stomach didn’t help carry my feet toward the porch, and each step I took was labored and forced. Masyn and I had been friends for seventeen years, and I was about to risk it all to relieve my heart of the pain it had carried by not claiming her as mine before now. Either way, I was moments away from sealing my fate—I’d either get what I wanted, or lose the greatest thing I’d ever had.

Instead of knocking—she wouldn’t hear it over whatever death-metal band she had playing—I pounded on the wood with my fist and waited. A moment or two later, the volume was noticeably lowered, and I beat again with just as much force. Each time my fist hit the door, another crack in my armor opened, leaving me more vulnerable than if I’d been standing here naked with a spotlight blazing down on me. The music turned off, and I waited.

The door swung open with such force that I half expected her to be pointing a rifle at my forehead when she appeared. She didn’t live in the best part of town, and I hadn’t bothered to text her that I was stopping by. It would have only given her the opportunity to tell me not to come.

I wasn’t prepared for the sight before me. Masyn had her hair secured in a messy bun at the top of her head with loose locks spilling all around her face, and any fool could see she’d been crying—a lot. All I wanted to do was scoop her into my arms and apologize for whatever I’d done, but she didn’t give me the opportunity.

The stench of alcohol poured off of her in waves powerful enough to knock a linebacker down. “What are you doing here, Lee?” Her words were slurred, and her eyelids fluttered closed when she spoke.

“I came to talk to you, since you’ve avoided me at work and refused to answer your phone.” The crease tightened across my forehead, causing my eyebrows to distort my line of sight for a moment. “Are you drunk?”

She flung the door wide open, inviting me in without issuing an actual invitation, and then turned away. “What’s good for the goose, is a gander.” Obviously, not all the pieces were coming together in her current state—or maybe that was precisely what she meant.

I wiped my feet on the mat, stepped inside, and closed the door behind me. “You never drink,” I accused, glancing around to ensure we were alone, “especially not by yourself.” I picked up beer bottle after beer bottle from her coffee table and threw them away. I needed something to occupy my hands and get me through this.

Masyn didn’t live in a palace, but she took pride in her home…and yet, this place currently looked like a shithole. She plopped down—or rather fell over—onto the couch. I stepped into her kitchen to drop the bottles into the trash, only to find a couple of days’ worth of dishes piled in the sink and rotting food on the counter.

“What the hell, Masyn? This place looks horrible and smells like a barn.”

“I haven’t had time to clean.” That was the understatement of the century. “Toby’s been keeping me busy.” And now she was spouting shit just to piss me off. She’d been at her brother’s house all day yesterday, the dock last night, work today, and no man drank Amstel Light.

“Cut the shit.” It was hard to be upset with Masyn, seeing her broken on the sofa. “What’s going on? You’re lucky the cops haven’t shown up.”

She waved me off as though nothing I said held any weight or significance. “How was your day-te?” A deaf mule could have caught the hate laced in those words.

I released a frustrated sigh and kept from rolling my eyes when I took a seat on the coffee table in front of her. “I didn’t have a date, which you would know had you talked to me or answered your phone.”

Masyn poked her bottom lip out with exaggeration. “Aww, did Peyton stand you up?” Her lashes fluttered like Betty Boop, but nothing about her accusing glare or her position on the couch made it attractive or the least bit seductive. In fact, her posture looked painful, and it probably would have been had she not been so intoxicated.

“No. We went to the lake.”

“Our lake?”

What the hell? “Masyn, it’s not like that at all. I called you to see if you wanted to go—”

“That would have been fun. I bet she looks like every guy’s fantasy in a swimsuit.” She huffed right before she chuckled. “I could have looked like Punky Brewster next to Reese Witherspoon. I bet she’d even look good in a brown paper bag.”

I didn’t know if she was referring to Reese or Peyton in regard to the grocery sack, and I didn’t think asking would serve any real purpose. “Why are you so put off by Peyton? You two seemed to hit it off on Friday. I don’t get it.”

“It’s no big deal.” Those four words morphed into one as they rolled together, combining syllables and eliminating spaces.

“It’s a big deal to me. I don’t have any interest in her. Beau, on the other hand, I can’t speak for.” I shouldn’t have tossed out that last part. I just hoped it would help her realize I wasn’t interested in the girl from out of town.

“Pfft.”

Hesitantly, I reached out and took Masyn’s hand. It was cold and clammy from clutching the beer bottle. “Masyn…” My heart threatened to pound out of my chest, and I couldn’t get enough air. “It’s not Peyton that I’m in love with.”

“I should have known better.” She made a feeble attempt to sit upright without letting me finish what I wanted to say. “I knew when Beau called off the wedding everything would get messed up. He’s home. Petyon’s here. And my best friend is falling in love.”

Sober Lee didn’t understand drunk Masyn. “What are you talking about?”

“Peyton. She’s got both of you at her fingertips, and both of you want her.”

“I don’t want her.”

“Beau does.”

“So what if he does?”

“One of the Holstein girls is going to take him away.”

“From you?” I asked, unsure of where she was going with this.

“Duh.”

That was a response I hadn’t heard since middle school.

“Do you have any idea how hard it was to talk to him when he was with Felicity?”

I did, although I wasn’t sure what that had to do with Peyton—or me.

“We had a code. If I wanted to talk to him, I had to send him a text. If he responded with a two, he couldn’t talk—you know because ‘no’ has two words. Letters—two letters. And a three if the answer was yes. And you would be half-naked in a bathroom or have some girl pressed against a wall behind the building.”

“Not following you, Masyn. I’ve never brought a girl home.” It was true, I hadn’t. I’d spent many a night at their place, in my truck, a bathroom stall, or even in an alley behind a bar, but I’d never brought some random girl into my house. Other than Masyn, there wasn’t a single female who’d ever spent the night, and not even Masyn had graced my bed.

“As if that wasn’t bad enough to watch”—apparently she didn’t plan to clarify that statement—“I had to deal with signals from Beau. Do you know how hard it is to be best friends with two incredibly attractive men? One of which you love, and the other you adore?”

The question was, who was who?

“Of course you don’t. You’re Lee Carter. Beau has the money girls swoon after, and you have”—she waved the beer bottle around in front of me—“all of that. And I’m left watching both of you leave me behind. And as many times as I’ve told my heart I can’t have my best friend, it refuses to listen.”

Maybe this wasn’t the best time to have this conversation. She was spilling her guts, even though none of it made sense and was harder to follow than a rat in a maze. But she was admitting things I wasn’t sure she wanted me to know.

“Masyn—”

She righted herself and jerked her hand away. With her feet planted firmly on the ground, she swayed when she put her elbows on her knees and leaned into me. Her warm breath tangled with mine, and the light overhead caught on her lips when she swiped them with her tongue. There was nothing I wanted more than to shut down her rambling and show her what I felt for her, except that I didn’t want our first kiss to be forgotten in a drunken stupor or regretted due to a lapse in judgment.

“I’m in love with my best friend, and I can’t have him. There will always be a Felicity Holstein or a Cynthia Green, or some other girl whose name I can’t think of right now, standing in my way. And I’ll always just be Masyn Porter—one of the guys.”

“Are you talking about Beau?” I wasn’t sure. Clearly, Beau had been engaged to Felicity, but Cynthia Green was the sticking point. I’d lost my virginity to her—which Masyn knew—but Beau dated her his freshman year, albeit briefly, when they both went to Atlanta for college.

She rolled her eyes, seemingly confused by my inability to follow what she said. “Yes.”

My heart shattered into a million pieces. It had never been a secret they were close. She shared things with him she’d never told me. But not once, in all the years I’d known her, had she even indicated a slight inclination toward having feelings for him. She hadn’t even cried or said she missed him when he went to school. Yet everything Beau shared implied she had insinuated beyond a doubt that she did feel that way toward me.

“Is that why you called him to complain about me? To have a reason to talk to him?”

Clearly, Beau had been wrong about her reasons for ending relationships and her need to reach out to him.

“I needed someone to talk to. I couldn’t tell you how I felt.” She reached for the stereo remote like she was going to turn up the volume to end the conversation, but I blocked her path and grabbed it first to put it out of her reach.

I wasn’t sure which hurt more, that she was in love with Beau, or that she couldn’t talk to me about it. “Why not?”

“Admitting you love someone isn’t easy, especially when they’re preoccupied by other people.”

Beau had never been with multiple people. He’d barely dated before he met Felicity. Even though I tried to follow her logic, it didn’t make much sense. I let out a sigh, hoping to exhale my disappointment and hurt with it—neither happened. “I wish you would have told me.”

“It wouldn’t have made any difference. And how is that fair to you? You had your own things going on.”

“Masyn, you’ll always be my top priority.”

“Humph.” She turned her beer up, finished it off, and plunked it on the table next to me. “It’s okay, Lee. I see how you look at other girls. One day, I hope someone looks at me that way.”

My eyes closed slowly, while I tried to process everything dancing in my head. When I opened them, the brown eyes I’d loved for years were pooled with tears.

“I’ll never look at you the way I do other women.” Not because I don’t love you, but because I do. “You have no idea how much of my heart you hold.”

She stood up and stomped to the kitchen. “Probably about as much as I do of Beau’s.”

The refrigerator door opened and closed. A bottle cap clinked on the counter and likely fell to the floor. And somewhere between there and when Masyn returned to the couch, she’d taken her hair down. It flowed in soft waves past her shoulders, and it was times like these it felt like my chest would explode, taking in her beauty.

As much as it was going to hurt to say what was about to come out of my mouth, I loved her enough to want her to be happy. “If you love him, you should tell him.”

Confusion marred her face. “I did.”

Either I’d missed something, or Beau had left out a large piece of information sitting at the table. “When?”

She rolled her eyes and huffed. “Tonight. Are you listening?”

“I was with Beau tonight.” There was no way he’d been texting Masyn at the same time he exposed me to Peyton. He was adamant that I tell her how I felt, man up. Beau never would have led me down a path of destruction intentionally. He had his faults, but he wasn’t a sadist and didn’t get off on hurting other people.

“And Peyton.”

I couldn’t figure out why we kept coming back to Peyton. “You realize she’s leaving on Friday afternoon, right? And going back to New York.” Peyton was a non-issue. Beau couldn’t date her, and I didn’t want her.

Masyn began to sway. And when she closed her eyes, all the color washed from her cheeks and was replaced with a hint of green. I didn’t have any idea how much alcohol she’d consumed tonight, but it was dangerously close to making an appearance. Before I could get up to find a trash can or carry her to the bathroom, her mouth opened and she leaned forward, covering me in everything she’d drank tonight. And it just kept coming, wave after wave. All I could do was hold her hair out of it. Trying to move her would only make the mess worse and leave a trail down the hall or into the kitchen that one of us would have to clean up. As it stood, most of it was being absorbed by my shirt and jeans, or pooled in my lap.

When the retching finally stopped, I took the beer from her hand that she’d managed not to spill. There wasn’t a drop of vomit on her, but I was bathed in it.

Tears of embarrassment streamed down her cheeks, and a muffled, “I’m sorry,” passed her lips.

“Why don’t you lie down, and I’ll try to clean this up.”

Before she could even nod, she leaned her head back on the sofa and closed her eyes.

I pulled my T-shirt over the back of my head and contained as much as I could in the front. The pizza box on the floor gave me a place to set it so the contents wouldn’t create more of a problem. Then I slid my flip-flops off my feet and removed my jeans. I wasn’t sure how Masyn managed to throw up exclusively on me, but there was only a bit of splatter on the coffee table around me and nothing on the carpet. In nothing other than boxers, I grabbed the pizza box and went to the kitchen to rinse my clothes out. My boxers were wet and clung to my crotch. I stared down at the horrible metaphor. Once I cleaned off the table and bagged the rest of the trash with the pizza box, I put my clothes, including my boxers, in the washing machine. There was no way in hell I was getting in my truck with the stench of vomit all over me, and leaving stomach acid on my skin didn’t seem like a bright idea, either.

Thankfully, I had the swimsuit I’d changed out of in my truck, although, I might get shot going to the driveway with nothing other than a towel wrapped around me. I’d never stayed here, so I didn’t have any clothes lying around. My swim trunks were cold and only partially dry, but shrinkage was only important when there was someone around to witness—clearly, that wasn’t an issue tonight.

The timer went off on the washing machine just as I hung up the towel I’d used to shower, so I threw the load in the dryer and went to move Masyn to her bed. The soft snore coming from the couch only served as a reminder to my heart that I’d never wake up next to that. I wasn’t sure I could handle the thought of her and Beau together, and I wondered if this would be the thing that broke the three of us apart for good.

I lifted her in my arms, tucked her against my chest, and took a deep breath, hoping for a whiff of the shop there, but all I caught was the scent of her shampoo. If Beau felt the same way about Masyn, and the two ended up together, I wouldn’t stand in their way, but I wouldn’t be able to watch it happen. And if he didn’t, I’d want to kill him for breaking her heart. Either way, none of this could end well—and it would all happen without either of my best friends there to comfort me.

Her bed was unmade, and I laid her down and then pulled the blankets over her. Her eyes parted, and she looked at me the way I’d looked at her a thousand times—as though there were nothing else in the world more important—and I wondered if her eyes held that much emotion when they met mine, just how glorious and stunning they must be when Beau saw them.

She grabbed my wrist and held on. “Please don’t go.” It was nothing more than a whisper in the dark, but it was as if she were asking me to stay—not just tonight, but forever. Like she’d heard my thoughts and realized I’d have to leave.

But even knowing how painful it would be to let her go, I was a glutton for punishment and selfish as hell. I’d take one more night if that’s all I could have. “I’ll be on the couch.”

Her hair cascaded over the pillow, and the uneasy grin that lifted her mouth tore at my heart. “Will you stay—”

“I told you I would.” Maybe I should be concerned about alcohol poisoning if she couldn’t remember the sentence I’d just said.

“With me. In here.”

I couldn’t tell her no. My heart refused to resist her. The two of us had never slept in the same bed, and I sure as hell never imagined the first time we did being like this, but if she wanted me, I wouldn’t leave. “Scoot over.”

She slid aside to make room, and I climbed in next to her. As soon as my head hit the pillow, I was engulfed in everything Masyn. She lifted my arm and tucked her body close to my side. I wanted to relish the feel of her arm on my chest and her head on my shoulder, yet in the end, allowing myself to make this into something it would never be would only crush me down the road. So I wrapped my arm around her waist and let my hand settle on her hip. Her breathing evened out, and I lay there, wide awake until the sun came up.

Masyn slept like the dead through the night, and when her alarm went off, she jumped at the obnoxious noise. We both had to be at work in an hour, and I still had to go home to change. She bolted upright, twisted over me, and slapped the snooze button on the nightstand, and the realization hit her that she’d spent the night with me in her bed.

“Oh, God. Lee…what did I do?” Her hands went to her head where her fingers massaged her temples. There was no doubt she’d have one hell of a hangover to contend with today. “Did we…?” She looked down at my swim trunks and then back at my face. “You know?”

“No.” I’d never take advantage of any woman who was drunk. “After your confession, you threw up, and I brought you in here. You asked me to stay, but we didn’t do anything.” I hated being the one to remind her of all she’d admitted last night, knowing how much would change between us.

“My…confession?” she repeated, unsure she’d heard me correctly.

With pursed lips, I nodded. “Yeah. You kind of laid it all out there.” I wasn’t able to hide my disappointment.

Her cheeks flushed with embarrassment. “Oh God, I never intended to tell you. Lee, I’m so sorry.”

Somehow, that didn’t make me feel any better. It just confirmed my thoughts about last night, of how significantly her feelings had changed things. I shrugged with feigned indifference. “It’s better that I know.”

“Can we forget it ever happened? Please? I don’t want that to change anything between us. You and Beau mean the world to me; I couldn’t stand the thought of losing either one of you.”

“So, you don’t plan to tell him?” He was single; she was single. There was no reason for her not to admit her interest—not to mention, she said she told him last night, anyhow. But if she didn’t remember that, I wasn’t going to be the one to break it to her.

“God, no. I mean I think he has an idea. I’ve kind of eluded to it for years, but I don’t want to rub it in his face. Things have been so weird.”

“And you want to forget last night ever happened?” My chest constricted painfully, and I wondered about what I was about to say, but in the end, her happiness was important. “I really think you should tell him…when you’re in the right frame of mind.” There was no point in all of us being miserable.

She hopped up and straightened her clothes. “Promise me you won’t. It’s too embarrassing.”

“What’s embarrassing about loving your best friend?”

Her eyes filled with sadness, and she cast her gaze to the floor. “Not having them return your feelings.”

I didn’t know what to say. I had no idea how Beau felt about Masyn, and I didn’t want to encourage her the way Beau and Peyton had urged me, only for Masyn to be let down. I sat up and put my feet on the floor. She was within arm’s reach, so I took her hand and pulled her onto my knee. I wrapped my arms around her center and hugged her tightly. “Your secret’s safe with me.”

She hugged me back and squirmed out of my grasp. There was no reason for her to be uneasy, although clearly, she was.

“Thank you. I just want to forget about last night and every stupid thing I said. Please don’t hold it against me.”

“Okay.” I stood and made my way to the laundry room with her hot on my heels. I didn’t turn around since I could hear her close behind me. “So, we’re good?”

She veered off to the kitchen to grab coffee. “As long as you don’t think I’m a moron. Yeah, we’re good.”

If only she knew.

“Not a chance,” I called out over my shoulder, trying to keep things light. I closed the laundry room door behind me, grabbed my clothes, and quickly changed. When I emerged, she was standing on the other side with a fresh cup of coffee in a to-go mug for me. “Sorry I don’t have time to make you omelets before work.”

“There’s always the weekend, right?” Her hopeful tone didn’t match her longing expression.

I kissed her on top of the head, took the cup of coffee, and agreed, “Name the day.”

She escorted me to the door and opened it for me to step through. “Hey, Lee?”

“Yeah.” I turned as I opened the truck.

“Thank you for not making me feel stupid last night…or this morning. I’m sorry I dumped all that on you. It wasn’t fair to put our friendship on the line like that.”

“That’s what friends are for, right?” I smiled even though my heart shriveled inside my chest.

Her face dropped. “Friends.” She nodded. “Right.”