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She grins and gets up on her toes to kiss me. “I really am going to clean up.”

“Uh huh.”

She gives me a shocked look. “Come on! I’m a catastrophe, but I do clean up afterward!” Her cheeks redden as she shrugs. “I mean, you know…eventually.”

I roll my eyes. “Like the times you ransacked my room at Morvaine?”

“Times? Plural?!” She shoots me another overly dramatic “who, me?” look. “I only trashed your room once! And it was warranted!”

I chuckle. “Maybe so. But it was definitely twice.”

She frowns. “It…really wasn’t.”

I give her a curious look. “The first time, you wrote stealing police evidence is a no-no⁠—”

She sighs. “Okay, I broke into your room a second time, after the whole thing with your car…”

She gives me an embarrassed look when my jaw tightens.

“But I was cheeky that time, not chaotic.” She shrugs. “I wrote karma is a bitch, bitch, on your mirror and then tossed gay porn all over the place in case you ended up bringing that cum-dumpster Vivienne back to your place.”

I snort. “Cum-dumpster?”

She scowls at me. “Dick vulture. Husband-sniffing menace. Whichever.”

I chuckle as I pull her into my arms and kiss the top of her head.

“I never had any intention of going home with her.”

“Better not have,” she mutters darkly.

“But you definitely did trash my room that time, too.”

Bella pulls back and gives me a weird look. “Dame, I’m flat-out telling you, I didn’t. I wrote on your mirror, tucked the boy-love porn under your pillow, and...” She grins impishly. “Okay, I might have left pictures of ultrasounds that I printed off the internet taped to your bathroom mirror. But honestly, that was it.”

My brow furrows. “But my room was a shit-show when I found it that night. I mean, worse than the first time.”

She shrugs. “Got any enemies?” She winks. “Aside from super adorable ones…”

She bats her eyes at me, making me chuckle.

“Maybe it was Cenzo?”

I nod slowly. “Yeah…maybe.”

I doubt it, though. Cenzo and I do stupid brother shit to each other, but ransacking my room to the point of slashing open my fucking mattress is way above and beyond anything he’d do.

And it’s pretty clear now it really wasn’t Bella.

So that's…interesting. Maybe slightly alarming.

Half an hour later, despite my best intentions, I’m helping Bella clean up her boba explosion in the kitchen when she glances at me.

“Hey, what were you going to say before? When you first walked in. You said you’d just gotten off the phone with…and then you trailed off.”

“Gee, I wonder why.”

I laugh when she playfully smacks me in the chest.