Emma:
If I leave now, I can be back in forty?
April:
Don’t be silly, enjoy your dinner! We can do drinks another time
April smiled, touched that Emma would drop everything to make sure she wasn’t left hanging.Ride or die, she thought fondly, when her phone vibrated with a text from her mom, asking if she could come home ASAP. She returned to her group chat, quickly typing another message as she continued to smile to herself.
April:
My mom needs me anyway, so don’t feel bad. OK?
Emma:
Is she all right?
Izzy:
Let us know if you need us
Emotion squeezed her heart and April replied quickly, reassuring them and promising to call if she needed anything. Her mom had sent a follow-up, a garbled voice message about there being a leak in the kitchen, and April grimaced. It seemed more like a job for her brother.
She hit dial while she walked and sighed when Noah’s line went straight to voicemail—no doubt he’d already reached practice and wouldn’t check his phonefor a while. She tapped out a message on her phone, asking him to come by their mom’s house as soon as he could to help. She was too busy staring at the screen and looked up too late to stop the collision with a firm chest and arms carrying a large bag of takeout.
“Crap! Sorry.” Luckily, she had taken the brunt of the impact so the guy didn’t drop his food, but she stumbled backward and her ass hit the pavement with a dull thud. It wasn’t until he shuffled the brown bag off to one side and offered her a hand that she realized exactly who she’d walked into.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“Oh. It’s you,” April deadpanned, certain that she must be blushing from the heat rising in her cheeks.
Luke seemed about as thrilled to see her as she was to see him. Which was to say,not very. He pulled her up off the ground with one hand, and April tried to hide the shiver that ran through her at his touch. Luke frowned down at her as she brushed off the back of her jeans while she furiously tried to avoid eye contact. “Are you OK?”
“Yeah, sorry. I should have been looking where I was going.”