“Good morning, Bryce.”

“Good morning. What time is it?” she asked, yawning.

“Close to ten.”

“Ten?”

“Yes. Were you supposed to help out at the café this morning?” He knew her parents usually opened the café for the early morning church-service crowd.

“No, usually I don’t on the weekends.”

He nodded. “You’re hungry?”

“Why? Are you going to feed me?”

“Of course. How does Cajun fish and cheese grits sound?”

“Like heaven. But first, I need to ask you something.”

He lifted an eyebrow. “What?”

“Why is my picture in your bedroom? I told myself I wasn’t going to ask you about it, but I have to know.”

Kaegan glanced over at the photograph. “Do you remember when you gave it to me?”

“Yes. I was in my senior year at Grambling and figured it was time for you to have an updated photo of me.”

He shifted to flip on his back and stare up at his ceiling. “After we broke up I packed all your stuff up that I had, but for some reason I couldn’t get rid of anything, so I put it all in storage. It was only when the house was finished here that I arranged for all my stuff in storage to be shipped to me. This house is so large, I figured I had space for it all now.”

He paused a minute and then said, “It took me around eight months to go through all those boxes. Then I came across the one with your name on it and again for some reason I couldn’t get rid of it, but I wanted everything out of my sight...except for that picture. I figured waking up and seeing it every day would be a constant reminder why I could never trust or love another woman.”

She was quiet for a long while, and then she said, “Okay, I can get that, but now that we’re friends again, why is it still there?”

He met her gaze. “Now it’s a reminder of what I lost because of my stupidity.”

She released a deep sigh and he had a feeling he wouldn’t like what she was about to say. “I meant what I said last night, Kaegan. Us sharing a bed wasn’t the beginning of anything. We’re still nothing more than friends.”

Kaegan wondered if she really believed that. He couldn’t say he didn’t know of friends who slept together, because he did. They thought of themselves as friends with benefits. Kaegan had decided not to indulge in any relationship like that, mainly because there wasn’t a woman he wanted as both his friend and his lover. And he sure as hell didn’t want that kind of relationship for him and Bryce.

“Kaegan?”

“Yes?”

“We still have that understanding that last night was one-and-done, right?”

If she truly believed that, he wouldn’t argue with her about it. She would discover soon enough that when it came to them, there was no such thing. “Yes, there’s still that understanding.”