Moments in Time by Karen Stivali Read Free Book Online Page A

called for backup. I threw all the laundry in the wash, and she helped me straighten up.”
    “You did my laundry?”
    “Just the bed stuff.”
    “Wow.” I can’t believe he did all that.
    “After the stuff you told me last night, I figured it was probably kind of important to you.”
    “It was. It is. Thank you.”
    “I owe you at least a load of laundry for all the food you bring me.”
    A smile tugged at my lips, but something still nagged at me. “What about Wendy?”
    “She said it was worth it for those cookies.”
    “No, I mean did she, like, ask anything? Like why….” I was too scared to complete the question.
    “Don’t freak out, okay?” Tanner’s eyes scanned mine.
    Of course I started freaking out. My heart drummed in my ears again. “What?”
    “Wendy kind of knows what happened. With us.”
    Every bit of oxygen left my body. If there hadn’t been a bookcase for me to lean on, I probably would’ve fallen over. “Knows….”
    Tanner looked at the floor for what felt like a decade, then looked up at me through his dark hair. “She didn’t come over last night because I’d told her I was into someone else.”
    He might as well have punched me in the gut. Someone else? So it’s not Wendy I have to worry about, it’s someone else? “You are?”
    His eyes met mine, and I forced myself not to look away. “You. I told her I was into you.”
    “But you didn’t even know if anything would happen at that point.”
    “Yeah. Didn’t matter. Even if nothing had, I thought I should tell her.”
    “Why?”
    Tanner gave a long blink, and I watched those black wings cover his eyes for a moment. Fuck, he’s gorgeous. “It felt important. Turns out she already knew before I’d even said anything.”
    My eyes were so buggy, I didn’t even think I could manage a blink if a sandstorm hit the library. “She did? How did? I mean when did…?”
    “I don’t know. She’s a girl, and we’ve been friends since we were fifteen. She knows me pretty fucking well.”
    “I’ll say.”
    “We were never really a thing, you know. I mean, Monday nights, that was just a hookup. She’s got a boyfriend at school in the city. That’s why she goes home as many weekends as she can afford. It’s to see him.”
    “She has a boyfriend?”
    “Yeah. They’ve both done the long-distance thing before, and it didn’t work out, so they made a pact that they can do the friends-with-benefits thing with someone nearby. To keep them from meeting someone new and having the new person turn into a relationship. I don’t know. It works for them.”
    I struggled to wrap my head around everything he was telling me. I knew he and Wendy had been friends since high school, but I had no idea they were doing this friends-with-benefits thing in an official capacity. Honestly, I’d figured she was in love with him. “So you’re not into her?”
    “Not the way I think you mean.” His lips twitched in a smile.
    “Yeah, I know you’ve literally been into her. I’m not deaf.”
    His grin got broader, and God help me, my stomach flipped over just from watching his mouth. My cock noticed too and seemed to be having a flashback of that mouth wrapped around it. I shifted—as if there was a pose I could strike that would make it more comfortable to have a hard-on in jeans.
    “And she’s okay with you not being into her?”
    “It was just sex, Collin. I mean, we love each other as friends, but really, that’s it. She’s cool.”
    I still hadn’t had one question answered, though. I took a deep breath. “What did she say? About us?”
    “She’s glad I finally got my head out of my ass and manned up—her words. She thought I should have told you when we first moved in.”
    “You knew back then?”
    “That I was interested? Shit, yeah. I kinda knew since we first met.”
    “Two years ago?”
    Tanner nodded. I wanted to touch him so badly, my fingers burned with need. “That night you and I were the only ones who