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Walking into my house and finding her here. Seeing her with people I care about. Kissing her hello without thinking. Holding her hand while my friends make complete assholes of themselves.

For the first time, I'm not standing outside watching what the married Rovers have found.

I'm inside it.

I have someone to look for when I walk into a room. Someone who looks for me too. And I don't give a single fuck who sees it.

That's the terrifying part. Not that everyone knows I’m sleeping with Layla.

Let them know.

Hell, let the entire fucking world know.

The terrifying part is that somewhere over the last seven days, sleeping with Layla stopped being the thing I wanted most from her.

I want this.

I want to walk into rooms and find her.

I want her hand automatically reaching for mine.

I want her laughing in my library.

I want her things mixed up with mine.

I want my friends to expect her beside me.

I want this to become so ordinary nobody goes silent when I kiss her hello.

And standing there with her fingers threaded through mine, I realize something that should scare the absolute shit out of me.

I'm not wondering what Layla is to me anymore.

I think I know.

The only question is whether I have the balls to tell her. Especially when she still doesn't know how this whole fucking thing started.

Chapter 23

Layla

I'm not sure exactly how it happens.

One minute, we're having a perfectly reasonable discussion about how a Jersey Devil can have sex with a human woman while allowing only certain parts of his supernatural nature to come out.

And yes, that discussion involves diagrams. For literary analysis.

Obviously.

The next minute, book club is invaded by a hell of a lot of testosterone. The men pour into Mitchell's library, and everything changes.

Not in a bad way.

Just—

Wow.

I watch the wives greet their husbands, and for a second I forget I'm supposed to be a journalist observing all of this.