Page 145 of The Score

"Maybe we should stage our own," Nat suggests with a teasing smile on her lips.

"Oh no, how sad," I say in an exaggerated tone. "I don't think we'll have time for that."

I glance at the door again. No sight of Bear yet.

Noise builds around us, as big men find their guests and sit down for a meal. My stomach churns, but I breathe through it.

I feel caught. Like someone will remind me, tone full of scorn, that I said I would never fall in love. Like what I'm feeling is my choice. They would point at me with disdain, for letting myself get caught in fantasies that endanger my friendship with Bear.

"You know you can tell us to shut it, right?" Nat laughs. "You don't have to entertain our curiosity."

"Then consider it postponed." I let out a relieved sigh. "I just realized five minutes ago that I may or may not be feeling things for my husband. I'm not ready to talk about it. I need to panic some more first."

"Well, as long as you finally realized," Nat says.

Ames gives me a knowing smile. "Just remember you can talk to us if you need to. It's what you all told me just a few months ago when I was trying to figure things out with Saint. I'd love to pay back the favor."

"And even if Bear is your best friend," Nat adds, "maybe this is one thing you can't talk to him about yet?"

The biggest irony of all is that I could never talk to him about romance. Who knows why that's how it used to be as we grew up. Today that's still the case, but for a reason I understand. If I told Bear I'm feeling a flicker of romance for him, I'd be trampling all over the boundaries we set between us. I'd be rewriting the friendship we promised each other and, for what? Bear plans to take the magical brain cocktail we call love at face value. He craves to fall in love like in the movies, and I can't offer him that. All I have to give he already has. If that were enough, we would have known it by now.

"Thank you." I manage a smile at the three of them. "I know I can talk to you all about anything."

Today there's no point. If I can't offer Bear the kind of sweeping courtship he's dreamed of, I can't cut away yellow ribbons and ignore red signs. I recovered from every heartbreak in the past, but I wouldn't recover from the heartbreak of failing with Leon Karlsen.