She doesn’t hate me, she fucking likes me. I force myself to breathe, try to settle the fact that I am barely holding it together. My body, it’s reacting accordingly. The second I drop back onto the couch, it hits me, this rush of heat, this tension in every muscle, this sharp, too-tight feeling that makes my brain stall out completely. She just admitted she feels the same. My body is way ahead of my brain in deciding what to do about it.

That’s the exact moment Tate decides to make his entrance again. The second I hear the lazy, unbothered sound of his footsteps coming down the stairs, I already know I’m about to start regretting every decision I’ve ever made.

“Man,” Tate says as he steps into the living room, completely at ease, like we didn’t just have an entire conversation about him upstairs, like I haven’t spent the last hour trying to keep his existence from ruining everything. “I was really hoping for some yelling by now.”

Haven snorts, but I am still trying to breathe like a normal fucking person, like I don’t have a major fucking problem pressing against my jeans right now. I glance at her, half-praying she hasn’t noticed, half-panicking that she has, but she’s too busy looking at Tate.

He crosses his arms, leaning against the doorframe, watching us with too much interest. “You two look cozy. What’d I miss?”

I glare at him, fully prepared to commit a crime if he doesn’t leave.

Haven, meanwhile, leans back against the couch, “Oh, you know,” she says, throwing a glance at me, smirk widening when she catches how tense I still am. “Just processing the fact that I was tricked into spending nearly a year playing games with the world’s most insufferable asshole.”

Tate grins. “Ah, so you’re talking about me then.”

I groan, because this is my life now. My entire fucking life and it’s a goddamn nightmare.

Tate doesn’t just stand there and let the moment pass, of course he doesn’t. No, he leans in, settles against the doorframe like he has all the time in the world, like he’s waiting for an invitation to ruin my night.

I can already see it in the way his smirk deepens, in the way his eyes bounce between us like he’s clocking every single little thing he can use to get under my skin.

He crosses his arms over his chest, and lets his eyes slide deliberately over to Haven. “So,” he chuckles. “You finally pieced it all together, huh?”

Haven huffs out a dry laugh, her arms crossing over her chest as she tilts her head at him, like she’s still sizing him up. “Not like you made it hard. You literally left your dumb mask lying around like you were hoping I’d recognize it.”