Total pages in book: 9
Estimated words: 7742 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 39(@200wpm)___ 31(@250wpm)___ 26(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 7742 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 39(@200wpm)___ 31(@250wpm)___ 26(@300wpm)
I grunt. “Bryce has more money than he lets on. Don’t let him stiff you again.”
“He said he needed the money to buy his kids presents.”
“Ah,” I say, nodding. “Well, hard to say no to that. Especially if you’ve got a secretly squishy heart like you do.”
Her eyes shift sharply up, locking on mine, sending that old, familiar ache spreading through my chest again. “Don’t make fun of me, Panic. Not tonight.”
“I’m not making fun of you,” I say before adding in a softer voice, “I was being sincere. You’re one of the kindest people I know, Frances.”
She blinks faster, her throat working before she asks, “Why do you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Call me Frances?” she asks. “I have a much prettier first name, you know.”
“I know,” I say, unable to resist the urge to tuck a stray lock of hair back into her cap. But the moment I touch the silky strands, I know I’ve made a mistake. It’s so fucking soft that I can’t resist the urge to wrap it around my finger as I add, “But that’s the point, I guess.”
She scowls. “I don’t follow.”
“I’ve spent a lot of time trying to forget how pretty you are,” I hear myself confessing. But once the words are out, I wouldn’t take them back, even if I could.
I’m tired of pretending she doesn’t affect me the way she does, the way she has since that kiss five years ago. And fuck…it’s not like I have anything to lose. This is the longest conversation we’ve had since she was a teenager. She’s excelled at ignoring me and icing me out the way she excels at everything.
If honesty turns out to be a bad idea, we can just go back to avoiding eye contact and swift “hellos and goodbyes” and pretend tonight never happened.
But something tells me that’s not how this is going to play out. Maybe it’s the Christmas tree glowing softly in the corner of the room, making my parents’ den feel full of magical possibilities. Maybe it’s the fact that Genevieve is still the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen or how much I’ve missed having her in my life.
Or maybe it’s all the cat hair going to my head, making it hard to think straight, let alone dwell on all the reasons this might be a bad idea.
Whatever it is, I don’t fight the longing rising inside of me.
I let it draw me closer to her upturned face as her lashes flutter closed and her chin tips up ever so slightly, offering me an invitation I couldn’t resist if I tried.
I press my lips to hers, electricity sizzles across my skin, and instantly I know this is it, the moment that everything changes.
Chapter Three
GENEVIEVE
I’m drunk.
Or dreaming.
Or dead.
Yes, that’s it! I’ve been murdered by feral cats and have passed through the veil to become another haunt trapped in the Lawrence-Donovan family home.
And this isn’t Panic I’m kissing; it’s the sea captain who waddles around the attic, complaining about the gout he’s been suffering from for a few hundred years.
I only encountered the sea captain twice—a couple quick flashes that scared me half to death back when I was a kid—but Kirby sees him all the time. She chats storylines with him when he’s in a solid mood and sets out a cup of tea for him when he’s grouching about the pain in his feet. She tells him it’s the cure for gout, he believes it, and is healed by ordinary peppermint tea he can only pretend to drink with his foggy ghost hands.
Apparently, even in the death, the human brain is miraculous, terrifying, and unpredictable. It can heal us with a placebo sugar pill or tear us apart with baseless fears just as easily.
I’ve secretly been terrified of this moment—the moment when Panic and I finally confront our past, that kiss, and all the fallout after. But when I’ve fretted about it, I’ve always imagined an awkward conversation at a holiday party or a pitying conversation with Eric and Leo, begging me to stop giving their friend the cold shoulder and come out on Cutter’s boat with them again next summer, the way we used to.
I never imagined this…
I never imagined a kiss even hotter than our first one or Panic’s fingers threading possessively into my hair, making my sock cap tumble to the floor. I never imagined wandering hands or my racing heart or the way my lady parts give him a standing ovation as he pushes me back onto the carpet and lengthens himself on top of me.
His delicious weight settles between my thighs. I instinctively wrap my legs around his waist, moaning as I rock against him, encountering clear evidence that this isn’t a pity kiss. As he meets my hip roll with one of his own, pressing even tighter against me through our clothes, he’s rock hard behind the fly of his jeans.