Will bit his lip. “Shit. Is it bad? Is it a bad plan?” Because sometime in the last twelve hours, he’d started to worry it might be. Specifically, when he’d tried flirting with Abbie, which he’d never done, and she’d looked at him like he’d grown an extra head and she was tempted to smack it.

“You know what?” Jase said. “It’s not a bad plan, actually.”

Oh, thank God.

“But there is a better one.”

“What?” Will demanded. “Tell me.” After all, he needed all possible options if he was going to choose the best one. Needed to see every angle if he wanted to stand a chance at doing this without destroying their friendship.

Jase laughed, as if this whole situation was funny instead of Extremely Fucking Serious, Thank You, Jason. “How about you … tell her how you feel?”

Will blinked. Several times. That actually hadn’t occurred to him, probably because he got dramatic when it came to things that mattered.

And Abigail Farrell mattered. Maybe a little too much for him to think clearly.

“You know how impatient Abbie is,” Jase was saying. “If things start to change between you and she doesn’t know why, she’ll get annoyed. So just tell her, upfront, and ask her if there’s any chance she could feel the same.”

Fuck. Jase was right. Obviously, he was right. And this was kind of a dreamy concept, because she might say yes, and Will might be deliriously happy, and everything might be perfect by the end of the fucking day—

But.

The complete opposite could happen too. The complete opposite being that Abbie didn’t feel the same, leading their friendship to collapse under the strain of his weird unrequited love. And if there was one thing Will couldn’t lose, it was their friendship.

His pulse suddenly became audible. “I … don’t think I can do that,” he said, his voice cracking in the middle.

Jase sighed. “Yes, you can. I realise no one wants to be rejected, but—”

“I don’t mind being rejected.” He was an actor. He’d been rejected in every possible situation for almost every conceivable reason, several thousand times over the years. So that wasn’t the problem. That couldn’t be the problem. He wiped his free palm against his thigh and swallowed. “I just—I don’t think this is a good time to be so upfront. Wouldn’t want to scare her.”

“Sure,” Jase said dryly. “Her.”

Twenty minutes later, safely dosed up with his allergy meds and firmly ignoring his looming self-doubts, Will headed downstairs. There was another tabby cat sprawled on the last step, and he jumped neatly over it with a quick “Morning, Bacon.”