Rule of Three Read Online Free Page A

As she set the pot on the stove to boil, she kept thinking about it, even as they moved out of the kitchen with their drinks.
    She liked seeing Chris do that. Once again, she wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was because of what had happened when Chris met her friend Steve. Steve had been one of her best friends in high school, part of the crowd she hung around with, and he was gay. He’d never “come out”—he just always was out. As far back as she could remember, everyone knew it and accepted it. He was a great guy. He had boyfriends, and so did she.
    Then in the summer after graduation, he’d been attacked by some kind of sick homophobes after coming out of a gay bar downtown. He’d been close to dying, in the hospital for weeks with serious injuries. She and all her friends had spent hours at the hospital visiting him, sick with grief and rage over what had happened to him. He’d recovered, but after that he’d moved away. They still kept in touch, and when he’d come back for a visit last year, she’d been anxious for Chris to meet him and his new partner. It didn’t bother her at all, but Chris was cool, almost awkward around Steve and Ryan, and that troubled her a little.
    She’d tried to talk to Chris about it after. He really didn’t even want to talk about it. Like many guys, she guessed, the idea of two guys together was—what was the word—distasteful? Repellent? She wasn’t sure. She remembered having those kinds of conversations with male friends over drinks in college, trying to get insight into the male perspective of why the idea of two girls together was a turn-on for them but not two guys. She’d even broached that idea to Chris, in an attempt to understand where he was coming from, but he had not wanted to talk about. Even the two-girls scenario.
    Anyway. She didn’t think Chris was homophobic, but seeing him physically showing casual affection for a male friend made her feel good. She liked it.
    After dinner, she didn’t have anything for dessert and Chris said, “I’ve got the perfect thing.” And he pulled the bottle of Limoncello out of the freezer.
    So they poured icy-cold lemony shots of the liqueur and drank them, talking and laughing about all kinds of things, until about ten o’clock when Dag said, “Man. I can’t drive back to the hotel like this. What is that stuff? I’m plastered.”
    Chris laughed and showed him the alcohol content. “You’d better crash here, buddy.”
    “I can take a taxi, I guess. Come back tomorrow for my car.” It was the Memorial Day long weekend, so neither Chris nor Kassidy had to work in the morning.
    “Nah. Just stay here. We have room.”
    Chris looked at Kassidy. She had this vague idea that it might not be a good idea but was a little buzzed too from all the drinks, so she said, “Sure. I’ll just make the bed.”
    “I’ll help,” Dag insisted, following her down the hall.
    “This sofa bed is from my apartment,” she told him. “I just had a little studio apartment so this was all I had room for.”
    “So this was your bed,” Dag murmured, and the sexy suggestive tone in his voice made her pulse leap.
    “Um. Yeah.”
    He helped her pull the bed out and she found sheets and pillowcases and pillows. They both laughed as they bumped into each other trying to stretch the fitted sheet over the mattress, but she was a tad tipsy and almost fell over. Dag caught her and pulled her against him to steady her.
    Their eyes met.
    “Thanks for letting me stay here,” Dag said, his voice a velvet stroke over her senses. “And thanks for letting me monopolize your boyfriend today. I know you two just moved in here and you probably wanted him home.”
    “That’s okay,” she said, a little breathless. Her heart had picked up speed. The warmth of Dag’s body heated her. His sexy mouth curved into a smile, not far from her own, close enough for her to see the whiskers shadowing his square jaw. “He’s glad you’re here. Of course you