“Well, if it isn’t hot neighbor Nick. I’m Christi. It’s great to finally meet you.”

Oh yeah. He was definitely in for it with these two.

***

How was he surprised that Christi went there? She was just as big a flirt as he was, and the fact that Bryce told her he didn’t want her to flirt with Nick would make her do it even more. “You’ll have to excuse her. She has no filter and enjoys pissing me off.” Bryce wrapped an arm around her shoulders and ruffled her hair like she was ten.

“Bry! Stop it before I embarrass you in front of your friend.” She pushed away and Nick laughed at them. It was a husky laugh, and one Bryce was quickly becoming accustomed to. The man laughed nearly as much as he did.

“As I was saying.” Christi straightened her shirt and held out her hand. “It’s nice to meet you hot neighbor—”

“Yes. He’s hot. We get it. Jesus.” When two sets of wide eyes whipped his way he realized what he said. “We get that you think he’s hot. You know what I meant. Be good or I’m kicking you out.” Bryce put both hands on Christi’s shoulders and led her toward the back door. Nick followed behind them and the trio went outside.

“Want a beer? We’ll get you a beer,” Bryce told Nick, who waited in the backyard as he and Christi went inside his house.

“You really don’t want me to have a crush on your friend. What’s up with that? You change your mind and realize you’re madly in love with me?” she asked as Bryce pulled three bottles of beer out of the fridge.

“Yes. Please, marry me. Make me the happiest man in the world. I don’t know what I’d do without you,” Bryce said with a straight face. Christi punched him, almost making him drop the bottles.

“Shut up.”

She turned for the door but Bryce called out, “hey,” and she stopped. “Don’t mention the aneurysm thing, okay?”

Christi’s brows pulled together. “I wasn’t planning on it, but okay. Why?”

He shrugged. People got weird when they realized someone had recently been sick, or nearly died. He’d had major surgery on his brain, and he didn’t want anyone to look at him differently because of it. He didn’t want Nick to.

“You’re being weird. You okay?” She was nothing but serious now. He really did love her. Not the romantic kind, but he didn’t know what he would do without this woman in his life.

And he was being a little weird, only he couldn’t put his finger on exactly why. “I’m fine. Let’s go. I wouldn’t want you to waste any of your time with hot neighbor Nick.”

CHAPTER NINE

“So, we’re in this bar and I notice a woman checking Bryce out,” Christi said as the three of them sat in chairs outside with their feet up on the porch.

“Which honestly, is an everyday occurrence for me—the women wanting me, not the bar.” Bryce shrugged and Christi rolled her eyes.

“Probably because they’ve never seen a head as big as yours,” she replied.

“They don’t realize that until they get my pants off.”

Nick laughed. Christi hit him and then Bryce rubbed his arm. “She’s violent. Stop trying to beat me up and tell the story.”

Nick felt a strange pang in his chest watching the two of them together. He could understand why they’d gone from friends to lovers; he just didn’t get the going from lovers back to friends. They finished each other’s sentences and obviously had a lot of love for one another. Had he ever had that with anyone? Looking at them, he couldn’t remember he and Jill being that way. And there was a quiet part of him, buried deep inside, that was jealous that Christi had it with Bryce.

It made sense, he guessed. Bryce was the first person he’d really met and hung out with in years because it was who he wanted to be friends with and not a friend of his wife. He was the first person he had besides his family who wasn’t attached to Jill, and obviously Nick was becoming a territorial bastard over friends he had no right to be territorial over.

“So anyway,” Christi continued. “I pretended to have an argument with him.”

“I was confused as fuck,” Bryce cut her off. “Here we are having a drink and then she’s suddenly mad at me because I don’t want her!”

“I can see how that would be confusing,” Nick told them and then waited for the friends to finish their story.

“Then she just walks away,” Bryce says.

Christi cuts him off. “Shh. This is my story. So then I just walk away.” Both Nick and Bryce laughed at how she said the same thing Bryce had, but she just continued. “I walk over to the girl, looking sad, start talking about how sexy he is, how I just want one night with him, but he’s not the type to just hook up.”