Shooting Star - Staci Hart Page 0,1

an impatient sound. “What if I’m not just fine with your … arrangement with Dex? You’ve been together all this time, and he hasn’t figured out that you’re the end all. Which either means he’s stupid or he’s really fucking stupid.”

I frowned when I realized this was more of a trigger than an ambush. “What happened?”

This time, the noise she made was a huff. “Nothing. I just saw him talking to Veronica Fisher, and the look on her face said she was about to shimmy out of her panties and stuff them in his mouth.”

I smiled through the pluck of jealousy in my ribs. “Veronica Fisher would stuff her panties in your mouth, if you let her.”

Z rolled her eyes. “Who wouldn’t? If he hadn’t kept his hands to himself and three Bibles’ worth of space between them, I would have swept the leg.”

At confirmation that Dex hadn’t accepted Veronica’s undergarment invitation, my smile widened. “He’s here with me. He’s always here with me.”

“I’m just saying—if I saw Roman with ass that eager in front of him, I wouldn’t be smiling about it.”

“Oh, really? You’d jump in the middle of it and mark your territory?”

At that, she huffed again.

“Exactly. Because Roman wouldn’t be amused. You two are honest with each other when you fool around. And last time I checked, you weren’t fooling around. Our situations aren’t so different.” I softened, meeting her eyes with understanding. “We love who we love, and we put up with a lot of shit to hang on to that feeling. Don’t we?”

A pause. Her eyes searched mine. “You know he’s not right for you, Stella.”

“And you know Roman isn’t your forever either.”

That truth hung heavy between us for a long moment. But before either of us spoke again, her eyes flicked behind me, and whatever she saw soured her face.

I knew who it was the second his hand slipped into my waist. I turned into Dex with the smile his proximity always evoked.

Z watched on in thinly veiled dismay.

“Hey, babe,” Dex cooed, kissing me sweetly. “I was looking for you.”

I sighed into him, curling into his chest like a kitten. He was handsome on a regular day, but in his vintage Army uniform? With his crystal-blue eyes and sandy-blond hair, being in his arms was like being on a tropical island—nothing else mattered.

That was part of his magic. No matter what he believed regarding monogamy and marriage, no matter who else he saw, when I was with him, I was the only girl in the whole world.

When I wasn’t with him … well, I didn’t think much about that if I could help it. Z did not make this easy.

“Dance with me,” he commanded hotly, his smile tilted and eyes on my lips. “You, in this dress, in these garters …” His hand trailed over my hip to the hem of my black A-line dress, and his fingers curled, gathering the fabric until his knuckles brushed the bare flesh over my stocking. “You’re the prettiest thing in Manhattan.”

I laughed. “You’re shameless, you know that?”

“It’s been said.” He kissed me again, hard enough to buckle my knees. When he broke the kiss, he stepped back. “One drink, and I’m going to spin you around on the dance floor until you’re dizzy.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.” With a wink that, beyond all reason, was hot, he turned for the bar.

I sighed, watching him go before turning back to Z.

Her arms were folded, her hip was popped, and her eyes said a whole mouthful without speaking a word.

This is less about you and Dex and more about Roman.

They’d moved in together, taken a step in their relationship that Z took far more seriously than Roman did. Before, it’d been fun and games. But now? Now they were committed in a whole new way, which felt like the worst idea in the history of bad ideas. We all knew Roman wasn’t cut out for it. But all we could do was hope we were wrong.

Z’s distrust of Dex wasn’t much different, and I didn’t blame her for thinking it. Dex and I had been close friends for a decade, lovers for well over a year. We were each other’s plus-ones, the constant. The steady, even though we operated under convenience and the pretense of independence. By the media’s account, we were an item, photographed together more often than not. In my heart, we were too. But there were no promises made, no strings on us, only the condition that Dex didn’t believe