Sugarlips (Beefcakes Book 2) by Katana Collins (latest books to read TXT) 📕

lower back and I quickly set the lasagna down to avoid a massive messy disaster.

“How did this… when did they…” I shook the fog from my brain. “I mean, did you do this?”

Chloe chuckled and shook her head. “I wish I could take credit. But they each did the sweetest, most self-less thing for each other.”

“They did?” Why was I only hearing about this now?

“Neil secured the old mill for Elaina’s healthcare clinic.” She paused, glancing around and lowered her voice to a whisper. “And Elaina paid for your mom’s surgery.”

I blinked, staring at them stunned. “Wow. You leave for ten minutes to heat up a lasagna and look what happens?”

I smiled, looking at my brother, so damn happy as he cupped Elaina’s jaw, smiling in a way I’d literally only ever seen in Elaina’s presence. They belonged together.

Across the room, my mom sat in her wheelchair, her hand resting gently on the IV fluid stand as she watched on, smiling as Neil scooped Elaina into his arms.

“Well, it was about damn time, wouldn’t you say?” I said. My heart pounded and an elated thrill spiked adrenaline through my body as I grinned. This means we can be together. If Chloe was holding back because of Elaina, then that was no longer a factor.

With another sidelong glance at Chloe, my grin faltered. She wasn’t smiling. If anything, she looked sad. I shifted as the uncomfortable silence hung in the air between us. It was foreign. Silence had never been weird with Chloe… not until now.

“Are you oka—”

“What you said—”

She swiveled to face me as we both spoke at the same time and then immediately smiled, both going quiet once again together.

“You go first,” I said.

She paused, thoughtfully. “I am the ocean,” she said, blinking the longest, darkest lashes known to humankind as she looked up at me.

I knew it. I knew it had something to do with that poetic bullshit I let slip earlier. I scared her. “Chloe—”

But she cut me off with a lift of her hand in the air, not letting me apologize or try to walk the statement back.

“I am. Everything you said was true. Oceans are perilous… risky. What we have is too special to risk. I just needed you to know that my stance on us hasn’t changed.”

“But Elaina and Neil are—”

“We both have a lot on our plates. Your mother’s cancer. Neil and Elaina leaving the country. I have two new businesses with the food truck and my marketing firm. And… it’s only been a couple of months since my fiancé cheated on me.”

I jerked back as though she’d physically struck me. She’d never used Dan as an excuse before. Her sister, yes. Her job, yes. But that lying, cheating bastard? Never.

She was lying. The Chloe I had met with a couple of months ago at her house after the breakup hadn’t denied her feelings for me—if anything she embraced them. She called me sexy and kissed me the very next morning. We accepted the feelings were there while acknowledging that they couldn’t come to fruition because of the tenuous situation with Neil and Elaina.

But now Elaina and Neil were together… and Chloe had me more at arm’s length than ever. This version of Chloe now standing before me was a whisper of the woman I’d grown to know over the past two months. The question was: What the hell had changed? Because despite her claims that nothing had, I could see the change; feel it. She looked more like the Chloe that had been on Dan’s arm for years; a caged free spirit trying desperately to fit into his world.

The old Liam—the Liam from last year or, hell, even last month—would have gone along with what she’d said, even if I didn’t mean it. I would have agreed to avoid conflict. But Chloe’s claim that nothing had changed was wrong. Because I had changed. Something in me had shifted. And I was pretty sure I owed that to her… to my best friend.

Perhaps I was just tired of being locked in the friend zone, but I felt braver than I ever had in my life. “Or maybe,” I said, take a step closer. “What we have is too special not to risk it.”

She shook her head. “That’s not—”

“What? Not true? If you’re only ever opening your heart to people you don’t fear losing … you’re never going to know real love. Love, Chloe, is risky.”

Although no tears fell down her cheeks, a gasping sob choked from her throat and she shook her head. “Dan wasn’t a risk. And yet, he ripped my heart out. If it hurts that much with someone I had lukewarm feelings for, I don’t want to know what it would feel like with—” The words choked from her mouth, mid-thought, and her mouth pressed into a firm, white line. “I—I have to go.”

“You have to go? Now? Your sister and Neil are about to leave for Budapest!”

She briskly walked toward the door as I followed her. “If anyone will understand, it’s Elaina.” She yanked the door open, pausing to glance at them, still in the center of the room. Her eyes shifted back to mine, glittering a dark shade of blue like a pebble beneath the water’s surface. “Tell them… tell them I love them.” She whispered the word on a breathy sigh before running out the door and down the hall.

Running away from me for the second time today.

26 Chloe

“So?” My sister prodded, her twisted expression freezing on my screen for a moment during the video chat. “Anything new with Liam?”

I sighed and straightened the air freshener hanging from my rearview mirror.

“Not since yesterday,” I whispered.

He’d been giving me my space… thank God. But for us, space wasn’t exactly abounding. We were either crammed in the bakery, prepping and cooking for the day, or we were stuffed into the food truck together.

Even with the emotional space he was giving me, I could