Chapter 10
“You cannot be serious,” Cassandra says, pushing through the crowd to catch up to me and Kingsley. My best friends drove from Alexandria to join us for the New Year’s celebration. After all, Kingsley could hardly pass up an opportunity to witness the Taco Drop again.
The twins ran off the moment we arrived to find their friends and fellow seniors; they wanted to watch their handiwork and bring in the new year together.
My older brothers have helped me keep my friends entertained, including Nash, who can’t stop flirting with Rae.
Every time they seem to get lost in each other, I notice that Wolf and John glance at Brody, who ignores them.
Mamá and Papá are in charge of one of the stalls, selling Mamá’s homemade empanadas and a flurry of other homemade snacks—they’re always a hit at these events.
“Savannah, please tell me you’re joking about meeting your ex-boyfriend tomorrow,” Cassandra pleads, and I roll my eyes.
They had sequestered me from the rest of the group under the guise of finding some spiced wine, but I knew it was really to corner me about Jaxon.
I made the mistake of telling them about running into him, and that he invited me to coffee, and that I said yes.
“What is the point of going?” Kingsley asks.
“That’s what I’d like to know. What reason could you possibly have for meeting up with Jaxon Gallagher?”
“He’s not that bad, Cass,” I say, pushing through the crowd when I see one of the spiced wine stalls up ahead.
Cassandra, unlike Kingsley, knows him, because we went to high school together.
She moved to Celestia the summer before sophomore year, and we’ve been friends ever since.
We were roommates the first year at Thornebrooke, and when I joined the Wildcats, Kingsley turned our duo into a trio.
“He’s a dickwad, and he treated you like shit in school.”
Was Jaxon kind of a jerk sometimes? Yes.
Was he a cocky, teenage football star who thought he was better than everyone?
Also, yes, but he wasn’t that bad. He never cheated on me.
Never called me names. Jaxon was just a self-absorbed kid who wanted a trophy wife, not a partner, and as time went on, that became abundantly clear.
Unfortunately for him, that wasn’t me. Unfortunately for me, he had a way with words, and that’s how he always managed to pull me back in…
until I ended things once and for all after a big fight at the state championship game our senior year.
I said some not-so-nice things to him right before he went on the field, but hey, we still won.
Still, he offered to give me a ride home from a party that night, and we had the same conversation, minus the yelling.
We agreed ending things was for the best, and then he started dating Olivia Jakes two weeks later.
“Seriously, Sav. You have a beautiful man right in front of you, and you’re going to chase some old high school fling—”
“What are you talking about, Cass?” They both give me a knowing look. “Who, Brooks? You guys, we are not—”
Kingsley dismisses me. “First, let’s not pretend like you call him Brooks. You are the only person I have ever heard call him John. Second, why not?”
“Because we’re just friends. And—”
“Who slept together.”
“And I don’t want to date someone I work with. That could really complicate things.”
“Sounds like an excuse to me,” Cassandra says, stepping up to the counter of the small hut selling wine. “Hi, Mrs. Daniels!”
“Evenin’, girls. Savannah, glad to see you could get some time off,” says Celestia’s resident town gossip, Mrs. Joyce Daniels. A Cheshire smile extends past her eyes that twinkle beneath the multicolored lights of her bungalow.
“It’s been good to be home,” I say, offering a tight smile of my own.
“Rumor has it you brought some of your more famous friends with you, including two very strapping young men. One of them yours?”
Cassandra looks right at me, and I roll my eyes. “No, ma’am. We’re just friends.”
“Too bad. That one is a tree I’d like to climb.
” Mrs. Daniels turns to the steaming pots of spiced wine along the back wall, and I try to ignore the snickering on either side of me.
I cannot believe she just said that. Actually, I can.
While Joyce Daniels has been happily married to the same man for the last thirty years, that’s never stopped her from looking. “Just three wines, then?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She waves me off when I reach into my pocket. “On the house, sweetie. Just promise you’ll lock that one down before someone else does.”
“Just out of curiosity,” Cassandra says, taking her wine. “Can I ask which one you mean?”
Oh, for the love of God.
The older woman’s eyes light up again. She cranes her neck to look over the crowd, and I know she’s found what she’s looking for when the smile creeps back onto her lips.
Mrs. Daniels turns to me. “He’s quite tall—well, they both are, but he’s not as tan as his friend.
No tattoos like the other one, either. I want to say I’ve heard his name is B-Brian? No, that’s not right.”
Cassandra’s smirk only grows. “Brooks?”
“Yes, that’s it! Brooks.” Mrs. Daniels raises her brow, pointing a single blood-red nail my way. “Honey, I saw the way he was looking at you earlier. We all have. And I’m serious, you better lock that down.”
“If she doesn’t jump on that man, I’m going to,” Cassandra adds, and I shoot her a glare.
Kingsley shakes her head, rubbing the space between her brows. “Stop talking, Cass.”
“I’m just saying. He’s too fine not to.”
I grumble in response, taking my wine, and use the growing density of the crowd to escape.
The crowd has started to fill the square in preparation for the countdown set to begin in one minute, according to the clock tower of City Hall.
Swimming through the crowd with a mixture of “excuse me” and “pardon me,” I try to get back to where we left my coworkers and two oldest brothers.
There’s a tug on my hand just steps before I reach the edge of the crowd, and it pulls me back a step, holding steady when I try to rip from its grasp.
I twist, ready to disarm whoever is on the other side, but my defenses fall immediately.
Blue eyes sparkle beneath the light of that damn LED taco.
Faintly, I can hear the countdown begin, starting at fifteen.
He pushes a lock of hair behind my ear, and my eyes flutter closed when his fingers trace the curve of my jaw, leaving a trail of fire in their wake. “John, what are you—”
“Savannah.” He dips down, his lips barely brushing mine. I can smell the faint mixture of mint and cider on his breath.
The countdown grows louder now as they reach the count of ten.
“What if they see?” I breathe out. There’s no guarantee that Cassandra and Kingsley aren’t looking for me in the crowd after I left them with Mrs. Daniels, or Raelynn, who might be wondering what’s taking so long.
A soft chuckle rumbles in his throat, and when I open my eyes, I’m greeted by his bright smile. “Let them.”
Our lips meet as the crowd yells out “Happy New Year!” I’m not sure who leans in first, but what I do know is this feels right.
The kiss is soft and warm, igniting the sensors in my brain and filling me to the brim with warm dopamine.
This is exactly what we’re not supposed to be doing, but I don’t care.
The feeling of him against me is too good, too right, to let it go.
We part too soon, and a soft whimper escapes me.
Gazing up at him, I have so many questions—What in the hell was that?
—but I don’t have a chance to get them out before he kisses me on the forehead and disappears into the crowd, leaving me standing there confused and conflicted.