Chapter 9 #2
“Nothing like a little voyeurism to get us into the holiday spirit,” I say, possibly to distract myself from the way my heart is reacting to the prospect of kissing Reese. I’m kind of regretting not doing it on the porch when we first arrived. Now it’s become this big thing in my head.
“It’s not voyeurism,” Hannah says, feigning offense. “It’s an incentive to find the mistletoe first.”
Once breakfast is cleaned up, Tess tells everyone they’ve got an hour to get ready.
I slip my napkin into the trash can, which is almost overflowing, while I watch Megan making her way over to Reese.
“Reese?”
Reese turns around, a flicker of surprise in her eyes. “Hey,” she says enthusiastically.
“Hi,” Megan repeats with a tentative smile.
I take my time cinching the trash bag, my eyes covertly watching.
“I just wanted to…ask you something,” Megan says.
“Sure. What’s up?”
“This whole sardines thing…”
“A little different this year, isn’t it?”
Megan gives a little laugh. “Yeah. Definitely. I just wanted to make sure you’re…comfortable with it.”
A loaded question if I’ve ever heard one.
“What? Oh! Yeah!” Reese laughs. “Totally. Don’t even worry about it.”
Megan’s shoulders drop with relief. “Okay, I hoped so. You’ve got Cole, obviously, but I just wanted to be sure. Okay, well, I’m gonna go catch up with Brady.”
“Yep! See you in a bit.”
Megan smiles and turns away.
Reese watches her for a few seconds, then her eyes catch mine. She gives me something between a smile and a grimace.
She offers to come to the car with me for the clothes, but it makes no sense to endanger the lives of two people, so I convince her to shower while I go.
The skate to the car—because that’s absolutely what it is—is only better than last night’s because I can actually see where I’m putting my feet.
I manage it without falling this time, but the stabilizing muscles required of my back every time I nearly biff it make it tempting to take Brady up on his offer to switch “beds” tonight.
If anyone amongst the group deserves a deflated mattress, it’s that guy.
If I didn’t think he’d pitch a fit and make Hannah feel bad—and Reese too—I’d probably go for it.
“Is that you, Cole?” Reese calls from inside the bathroom to the tune of the shower water.
“Yep! Alive and well.”
“Thank heaven,” she says with relief. “Can you just set the clothes inside the door?”
I open the door like it’s tripwired, but the real danger is my thoughts and where they’ll stray. They’re not real thoughts, though, because I’m just a fake boyfriend, and I’m only fake attracted to Reese.
When she comes out of the bathroom with wet hair and my gray sweatshirt on, the little flush of pleasure I feel is also fake.
“You wanna change out of that, and I can start the laundry?” she asks, indicating my clothes.
“Yep.” I head into the bathroom and strip, then wrap a towel around my waist and open the door to hand her my clothes.
Reese turns from her place at the bed, gathering up her stuff. There’s the slightest beat—a little flicker of her lashes as she notes my bare upper chest before she comes and takes the clothes from me. It’s like a shot of helium to my ego—enough to get me out of my head about what’s coming.
I’ve showered and dressed by the time she comes back. It doesn’t take that long to start a load of laundry, so I can’t help wondering if the timing of her return was intentional.
“You ready?” she asks. “Tess is rarin’ to go.”
I run a hand through my wet hair. “Yep.”
“Great.” She grabs the doorknob. “Let’s do this.”
“Hey.”
She stops and looks at me.
“How do you wanna strategize?”
She gives me a funny look. “I mean…I wanna win. I’ve lost the gingerbread house competition every year, but one thing I’ve never had to do is wear the sweater.”
“That’s a lot of pressure.”
One side of her mouth quirks up. “All that talk about you knocking my socks off as a fake boyfriend? Time to pay the piper.”
“I wanna win too. But, and hear me out, if we don’t win—obviously through no fault of mine—”
“Or mine.”
“And through no fault of yours. This would be due to unforeseen, catastrophic events. If, heaven forbid, that were to happen…would you prefer to reach the mistletoe before or after Megan and Brady?”
Her smile flickers and her eyes fix on me, but I can tell her brain is elsewhere. The hesitation lasts long enough to make me nervous, even though I don’t even know what answer I’m hoping for.
“After,” she says.
After. That means she wants them to see. It means it’s a performance.
Or maybe it just means she doesn’t want to see them kiss.
“All right,” I say. “Let’s go win. Again.”
We’re the last ones to join up with the group in preparation for the game.
Tess runs through the rules, and five minutes later, the four groups break apart in search of the fabled mistletoe.
Reese grabs my hand, and we’re on our way.
The cabin is bigger than I’d realized. Reese is convinced the mistletoe will be in the basement, which I hadn’t even realized the cabin had. It’s just a sequence of storage and utility rooms, and our phone flashlights locate precisely zero sprigs of mistletoe.
We pass Tess and Dylan when we get back to the main floor, but Reese is so laser-focused on the task that she barely acknowledges them.
I’m vaguely amused by her intensity and the strong grip she keeps on my hand, like she worries I’ll wander off if she doesn’t hold onto me at all times.
“I thought we weren’t trying to win,” I say.
“Yeah, but I’m not trying to lose, either.”
“Maybe we should just follow Brady and Megan,” I suggest.” That way we’re sure to find it right after them.”
“Yeah,” Reese says, “and have to watch them kiss and kiss in front of them. No, thank you.”
Timing this right—to come after Megan and Brady but not lose—seems pretty unlikely to me, but arguing isn’t going to help the situation, so I continue to follow Reese around like a puppy.
“Oh!” Reese stops abruptly, and my heart does too.
But it’s just a stray piece of pine bough hanging from the doorway.
The main floor yields no results, either.
“Reese,” I say as she looks through another cupboard. “I don’t think we’re gonna—”
“Don’t say it,” she says. “We’ve got this.”
“Yes,” I agree, like the world’s best fake boyfriend. That or the world’s best enabler of fantasies. “We do.”
She grabs my hand again and leads me upstairs.
A search of the bathroom and hall closets yields nothing.
“Maybe it’s in our room,” she says, opening the door. She stops short on the threshold.
I hear it too. It’s whispering, and it’s coming from behind the closet door.
We share a quick glance, then she leads us over to it, turns the knob, and slowly opens the door.
I hadn’t realized there was a closet in our room, but it’s a lot bigger than I’d have thought even if I had realized it.
Big enough to fit six adults—barely—most of whom are smiling in delight at us.
Hanging from the silver bar above their smiling faces is a sprig of mistletoe, a little, harmless horticultural representation of the holidays that has my heart thumping.
“Reese finally loses,” Hannah says with glee.
“And it was in your very own room the whole time.” Tess points two fingers upward at the mistletoe. “Time to pony up, you two. Remember: four seconds—at least.”
I’m ridiculously nervous, but I can’t lose sight of the goal here. If I have to kiss Reese, and if I have to do it in front of the guy that broke her heart, I’m gonna kiss her right.
“Don’t have to tell me twice.” I turn to Reese and pray she’s not dreading this.
She’s smiling, but there’s a little glimmer of something in her eyes as she faces me. Uncertainty, maybe?
I want to take my time, to decide exactly where to put my hands, how to come in for my first time kissing her—something I literally dreamt about last night.
But I can’t. People are waiting—waiting for me to kiss a person they assume I’ve kissed a bunch of times already.
Instead of time slowing down, it seems to speed up, demanding I act. I scramble to think how a guy who gets to kiss Reese Cameron on a daily basis would do this.
I cradle her face with my hands, pausing for a millisecond to make sure she’s okay.
Eyes fixed on me, she wraps her hands around my forearms, then pulls me gently toward her.
That little show of readiness from her is all I need. I press my lips to hers like a man who’s stumbled upon a cool stream in the desert.
Her lips are soft, and her hands squeeze my arms, her fingertips pressing into my skin. It’s a simple detail, but it lights me up.
I slide a hand into her hair. It’s soft in a different way than her lips, and I wonder if everything about her is different shades of soft.
A throat clears.
We break apart, remembering our audience.
I glance at them, and a few eyebrows are raised. Brady looks like he just swallowed a wrench, while Megan’s watching him from the corner of her eye.
Hannah’s looking at a non-existent watch on her arm. “You really took that at least four seconds and ran with it.”
I chuckle, a sound that’s a total mismatch with the thudding of my heart and the pulsing in my veins. “Did you say four?” I ask as I slip my hand out of her hair. “I thought I heard forty. So, where’s my sweater?”