Okay, I might still be out of it. I’m not a Disney Princess.

I’m not even to the kitchen when the doorbell rings.

Shit.

I don’t want Dom to wake up. He needs his sleep.

But I also don’t want to answer the door. What if it’s one of his cop buddies? What if they see me in my underwear and they don’t know he’s… well, whatever he is? I mean, he’s got to be at least bi. Not that it matters. Labels aren’t important. Well, except they are. Like, what are we now? Is he my boyfriend? Or my partner? Or my fuck buddy? Or—

Shit. I’m doing that thing I said I wouldn’t do.

The doorbell rings again.

Fuck it. I’m decently covered. I got this.

Except if it’s Bear, it whispers. If he sees you like this, he’s going to murder you.

That puts a little falter in my step.

But even before I can open the door, I hear a key in the lock and it turns and opens on its own. Well, not exactly on its own.

Stacey smiles at me, and when she looks me up and down, that smile turns into something more. “Hey, Ty,” she says, brushing past me. “Saw the car in the driveway, figured the big guy was home. Thought I’d drop on by and find out how the trip went.”

My face burns with the force of a thousand suns. “Uh. Er. Flarg.” I’m pretty sure I look like a homosexual deer caught in the headlights after just having sex for the first time.

“What’s that?” she asks, heading for the kitchen.

“Please, come in,” I say.

“Thanks,” she says. “Oh, I’ve got a key.”

“I noticed.” I look longingly at the front door, giving serious reconsideration to running through it.

“Hey, can you help me?” she calls, and I can hear the sounds of her rooting around in the cabinets.

I would rather not, and I would actually rather have her not exist in my vicinity right at this moment at all, but that doesn’t seem like a polite thing to say. “Uh, sure.”

I follow her into the kitchen, and she’s taken coffee mugs down and is fiddling with the fancy espresso machine Dom has. She pushes a button and it makes a grinding noise. She frowns and hits it. “Technology hates me.”

“If it makes you feel any better,” I say, “I don’t know how to work it either. What’s the point of having one of those when you can just go to Starbucks?”

She reaches up over the sink and finds a box of tea. It strikes me then that she probably lived here at one point, or at least has been here many times, and knows the house well. I’m jealous, but I don’t know why.

“This will do,” she says. “I’m pretty sure Dominic would be slightly pissed if we burned down his house. Speaking of, where is he?”

“Sleeping,” I say. “We didn’t get to bed until really late last night.”