Brody was about to pour batter on the waffle maker, but stopped and frowned at me. “It’s going to be okay, Kamryn.”

“Just because Kinlee and Jace were okay with it doesn’t mean your parents will be.”

“I’m not expecting them to be okay with it. I was never expecting anyone to be okay with it. Hell, my two closest friends more or less said they were glad I was happy but didn’t approve of what I was doing.”

My eyebrows rose, and my eyelids blinked slowly. “Um . . . who?”

“When Hudson and Steele came down for Tate’s—”

“Oh, my God, they know?!” I didn’t even know these men, and they’d known that Brody and I had been having an affair? My cheeks heated in embarrassment. Whenever Brody mentioned them, he always told me they were guys he wanted me to meet someday . . . but I doubted, because of what they knew about me, that this meeting would ever happen.

“They’re not really the kind of guys I can keep things from. Steele figured it out on his own, Kam.” He stepped closer to me and cupped my cheeks in his large hands. “Don’t be embarrassed. They don’t think any less of you, and they weren’t judging you, I swear. They were mad at me for making you wait for me to leave Olivia.”

I breathed out heavily and dropped my head. “This is a disaster. Your best friends and family are always going to think of me as the woman you had an affair with,” I grumbled. “Even if you think they won’t judge me,” I said before he could say anything.

“I’m sorry, Kamryn,” he said simply. “I’m just sorry.”

Looking up into his gray eyes, I placed my hands over his and sighed. “We went in this thing together. Please stop saying you’re sorry.” Leaning up to kiss him softly, I smiled against his lips and said, “We just have a few more things to get through, including telling your family, and then one day this will all just be a memory.”

“You know what I’m scared about?” he asked seriously, and my eyebrows bunched together. “When you tell Barb. From what you’ve said, I’m afraid she’ll come after me with a wooden spoon or something.”

I laughed, and he kissed me hard before releasing me.

“We’ll get through it, Kamryn. But until I go to work tomorrow, let’s just keep pretending like we have nothing to deal with and nothing waiting for us out there. All right?”

I studied his worried eyes and nodded. “All right, Brody.”

After our breakfast-for-dinner, we cleaned up the kitchen, but that took a little longer than expected when flirtatious touches and quick kisses started lingering and growing hotter. Soon the dishes and leftover food were forgotten as we got lost in each other on the cool hardwood of the kitchen. Once everything was finally cleaned and put away, we moved into the living room, turned on the TV, and lay down on the couch together as the shows played in the background. Sometimes we talked, sometimes we kissed, but we were always holding on to each other like we couldn’t get close enough—and I loved every second.

It was all so stress-free, so normal, and so perfect.

Later, my eyelids cracked open when Brody removed my glasses and put them on my nightstand. Running my hand over the fabric, I realized we were on my—our—bed, and I watched groggily as Brody removed his shirt and crawled onto the bed.

“I fell asleep?” I guessed.

“Little bit,” he said, his voice warm and rough with exhaustion. “Snoring and drooling all over the place.”

“Shut up.” I pushed at his bare chest, and he caught my hand in his, his laugh filling the otherwise quiet room.

“No, you looked adorable.” He kissed me gently and pulled my body closer to his. “Go back to sleep, Kamryn.”

And I did, so easily, just as I had done the last three nights. There was no fear that he would leave. There was no watching the clock. There was no Olivia. Again, it was just us. It was perfect.

Brody

July 21, 2015

“I DON’T KNOW if I can do this!” Kamryn hissed and dropped her phone into one of the cup holders in my SUV.

I sent her a reassuring smile and picked up her phone, searching for Barb’s number.

Kamryn refused to go out in public with me until my family knew about us, and I wasn’t about to keep hiding us. So we were having brunch at Kinlee and Jace’s with my parents, and I was making her call her aunt Barb on the way so we could get it all done at once.

“I’m going to be right here with you. None of them will be easy to tell, but it needs to be done. And the sooner we do it the sooner we can start our forever. Then it will be done, babe. We won’t have to hide, we won’t have to worry about them finding out . . . it’ll all be over.”

She nodded her head a few times and roughly swallowed as she looked out the window.

Pressing Barb’s number, I let the call go through my car and watched as Kamryn jumped at the first ring. For a few seconds, I didn’t think Barb was going to answer as the phone continued to ring. Just as I was about to end the call, I heard an accent that put Kamryn’s to shame come through the phone.

“Baby girl, are you all right? You never call me!”

My brow furrowed, and Kamryn started biting on one of her fingernails—something I knew she didn’t do.

“I’m fine,” she said shakily.

“What’s going on, I’m getting your—”

“Barb, I’m not alone.”