Chapter 33
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Lennon
This is my fault entirely.
I’m lying on the kitchen floor staring up at the ceiling with a collection of crystals arranged on my stomach and Jasper’s hands hovering over me doing something he would describe as energy work, and I would describe as concerning.
I made the mistake of mentioning, casually, in passing, that I wasn’t feeling great, and somehow that sentence became lie down and don’t move, and where did I put the selenite?
“Can’t I just take an ibuprofen?” I ask the ceiling.
“That won’t balance your chakras.”
“I don’t need my chakras balanced. I need—”
The sound of the kitchen door swinging open cuts me off, followed by a snort.
“What the hell are you guys doing?”
I look up and find Nevan standing in the doorway, upside down from my angle, with a yellow construction helmet on his head, a hi-vis vest over his shirt, staring at me with a grin he can’t quite hold back.
“She has cramps,” Jasper offers helpfully.
Nevan frowns at me on the floor, then at the crystals, and back at me. “Can’t she take an ibuprofen?”
“See,” I say to the ceiling.
Jasper sighs the sigh of someone surrounded by people who will never understand him and begins collecting the crystals. I sit up and help, dropping some into the pocket of my yellow dress before pushing myself to my feet.
“Happy birthday,” I tell Nevan, grabbing his hoodie strings to pull him down to my level and pressing a kiss to his cheek before I look him over again. “Wait. Is that… are you Bob the Builder?”
“You guys told me to wear the same costume as last year.” He adjusts the yellow helmet with one hand. “Something about heightening her chances of remembering.”
“And wanting a repeat performance,” I confirm.
“It’s what I wore last year.”
Jasper leans toward me and stage whispers, “She had to have been absolutely hammered,” and I choke on a laugh.
Nevan ignores this with the dignity of a man who has been ignoring Jasper his entire life.
“And what are you?” He looks me over—the yellow dress, the lemon clip, the whole situation—and one eyebrow goes up. “A lemon?”
I grin, and he snorts.
“Hey,” I say, pointing at him. “Two days’ notice. And it’s not like I’m exactly baddie costume material to begin with.”
“You could have been,” Jasper says thoughtfully. “You just keep choosing fruit.”
He’s dressed as a witch, and yes, a witch, because apparently, warlock is not the right word, and male witches are still witches.
“Anyway, I have your present here, birthday boy.” I turn and grab the little box from the counter behind me, except I can’t turn back around because Nevan has stepped up so close behind me that there’s no room.
His chest is warm against my back as he reaches past me and takes it from my hand, opening the box before I can present it properly.
It’s a keychain, a little heart split down the middle into two pieces, each half with BFF stamped into it in tiny letters. I bought it from the only shop in town that sells anything remotely gift-like.
“I know it’s not much,” I start. “This town really doesn’t have a lot of—”
His lips press to the bare skin of where my neck meets my shoulder, making me shudder and my breath catch.
Goddammit.
“I love it,” he murmurs into my ear. “Thank you.”
He pulls back, and I turn around properly. He takes his half of the keychain and clips it onto his keys without ceremony, then holds out the other half to me. I put it in my pocket, then look away before I keep staring at the way he’s looking at me.
“I saw the spread outside.” Nevan changes the topic, and my eyes find his gray ones again. “Everything looks incredible. You outdid yourself. That must have been so much work.”
“Thank you, and no, it was fine.”
“I couldn’t find the banana bread, though.”
“That’s because nobody should see it.”
Jasper laughs from somewhere behind me.
I reach toward the back of the counter and pull out the plate I’d hidden there. The banana bread already has one small candle in it, so I get the lighter from the drawer, touch the flame to the wick, and turn around.
Nevan’s gaze when he sees it does something to my heart that I refuse to examine right now.
“Make a wish,” I tell him.
He looks down at the plate, then up at me, holding my eyes the whole time he blows the candle out, which isn’t fair, but he seems to know it.
“Done.”
“It’s covered in sprinkles,” Jasper observes, sounding delighted.
“Maes’ tradition.” I set the plate down, cut two pieces, and hand them off. Both of them take a bite at the same moment, and both of them make the same groaning sound.
“It’s just bananas, you guys.” I laugh and look away to the kitchen swing doors.
Through it, I can hear the party already filling up, someone’s Halloween playlist doing its job. I’ve been mingling while I set up the last of the cakes before Jasper pulled me back here for my Chakra cleanse, and I know that guests and staff are already mixing and having fun.
Although neither Paul nor Ridge nor Derek has shown up yet.
“Have you seen Sydney?” I ask. “She makes a cute cat.”
Nevan makes a noncommittal sound. “We’ve already established that we’re more of a dog household.”
“Ha.” I grab a beer from the refrigerator. “I might go see if she needs a drink. Check what kind of mood she’s in.”
“Lemon.”
“Hmm?” I’m already moving toward the door.
“Lennon!” Nevan yells, but I push through it.
Behind me, I hear Jasper exhale. “You are both complete idiots.”
I find Sydney in the library, perched on the arm of one of the reading chairs, a drink in her hand, talking to some other staff members, her ponytail slightly askew, just like the cat ears. She looks up when I come in, and her face does the warm thing it’s been doing lately.
“Hey! You look cute.” She gestures at my dress. “Very yellow.”
“Very intentional.” I hold up my beer. “You look great. Love the ears.”
The music from the main room is loud enough to feel on the floor, and the library is only a little quieter.
Sydney giggles, and she has clearly been leaning into her drink for a while.
Her eyes are bright in the way that comes after the second or third glass, and I find myself thinking that this might actually be easier than I expected.
“Have you seen Nevan yet?” I ask.
She glances toward the restaurant. “Yeah.”
“Have you told him happy birthday?”
“Not yet. Probably should.” She takes a sip.
“Yeah, you should. He looks good tonight.”
“He looks good every day.”
Irritation spikes at that, but I note it, let it settle, and decide to push.
“You think he’s hot?”
“Have you seen him?” She tips her drink for emphasis. “Tall, built, those freckles. God… and he’s good in bed.”
The jealousy spikes harder this time, but I force my mouth into something neutral. “Well,” I say carefully. “You’d know more about that than I do.”
“You should try it,” she says as if recommending a dessert. “Genuinely. But watch out, or you’ll have him simp after you for a year.”
“I—”
“In town, everyone kind of knows he’s a great time if you manage to hook up with him. Very worth the simping.”
“He’s not just a lay.”
“No, yeah, he’s nice too,” she says easily. “He’s kind.”
She takes another drink, then she laughs. “But come on. He’s not really boyfriend material.”
My body goes very still, but Sydney keeps talking, oblivious.
“Everyone knows that. He struggled in school, like a lot.”
My fingers tighten around the beer bottle.
“And his mom and brother? Like…” She snorts. “The whole family is so damn weird. I feel bad for him, I do. And I don’t regret it. It was fun.”
My pulse starts pounding in my ears.
“But I could never actually be associated with him.” She lowers her voice conspiratorially. “Like properly. You know?”
I stare at her.
“I mean, imagine bringing him somewhere.” She wrinkles her nose. “I would never date someone like him.” She gives a lazy shrug. “But a little fun? Sure.”
Something inside me snaps, and I move before my brain catches up.
My beer hits the table hard enough to slosh over the rim, and I’m already halfway across the carpet to pull her hair when two hands slide under my arms from behind, and just like that, I’m airborne, completely off the ground.
“Sorry about that,” Nevan says calmly over my head to Sydney, already carrying me out of the library as if I’m not currently trying to commit a felony in his arms.
Behind us, Sydney lets out a startled, half-drunken laugh.
I kick back again against Nevan’s thigh. “Put me down!”
“No.”
“I’m serious!”
“I know.”
He pushes the door open with his shoulder and walks straight out into the garden while I continue trying to murder him with my feet, and his yellow helmet clatters on the ground.
Nevan
She’s still trying to fight me when I carry her outside.
Kicking, twisting, and apparently fully committed to violence.
“Let me at her!”
“Okay, calm down, you vicious little thing.”
I keep walking across the grass until we’re far enough from the door that the music dulls into a low thump. I keep my arms around her, mostly to keep her from actually turning around and going back in there, when I feel her teeth close on my forearm.
“Ow.”
That’s new.
She bites harder.
“Stop it.”
The bite releases, but she’s still squirming like a feral cat in my arms, so I keep moving until we reach the tree. The swings creak softly in the night air. I lower her onto one, but not gently enough to be mistaken for delicate.
“Sit.” She almost stands straight back up, but I put a hand on her shoulder. “Sit,” I repeat.
She glares up at me like she might try biting again.
The fairy lights above us flicker, catching in her hair and the bright yellow of her dress. Her cheeks are flushed, and her nose is scrunched up so hard it’s doing that thing I like more than I should admit to myself.
Jesus. She was about to pull Sydney’s ponytail out by the roots for me.
I crouch in front of her, one knee settling between hers, and turn my arm over to look at the bite marks already blooming pink.
“You should have come as a vampire,” I tell her. “Would’ve been more honest.”
“She’s a fucking bitch.”
“She’s not.”
“You’re defending her? After what she said about you?”
“She’s drunk.” I shrug and run my thumb over the teeth marks. “And she’s just saying what most of this town thinks, which is also true.”
“That is not the truth.”
“It is,” I say it without any edge, because if you carry anger about every stupid thing people say in a small town like this, it’ll eat you alive.
“I struggled in school. They only let me finish so they could get rid of me. I can’t read well. I can’t write well.” I shrug. “It’s fine, I’m just stupid.”
Her whole face tightens. “You are not stupid. Not even close.”
I hold her eyes for a second longer than I should.
Then I look back down at my arm. “I know what I am.”
“Do you think that I’m stupid?” She leans forward on the swing.
I frown. “What?”
“I struggled in culinary school.” Her voice has gone quieter now, the anger finding somewhere more useful to go. “Really bad grades. I dropped out when my dad died, and we couldn’t afford the fees anymore, but honestly…” She hesitates. “I don’t even know if I would have made it if I’d stayed.”
“And yet.” She lifts her chin. “I’m still an amazing chef. I made my own way.”
Her hand finds my arm, and her fingers brush lightly over the bite marks she left there.
“You made your own way too,” she continues. “You’re running an inn and keeping your family together, and you’ve been doing it since you were a kid. You make people feel safe without even trying. Sydney doesn’t know shit.” Her mouth tightens. “This whole town doesn’t know shit.”
I look at her, and her eyes meet mine.
Her nose is still scrunched, her jaw set like she’s ready to fight the entire population of Vernonia if they disagree with her, and I think about what I told myself for a few days now.
That she needs me as a friend, and the last thing she needs is someone else’s complications dropped on top of hers.
That I have no free time, a sick mom, and a brother who needs me, and exactly nothing to offer a woman like her.
And then she bit me because she was so mad on my behalf, and she’s sitting here in fairy lights with her fingers on my arm telling me this town doesn’t know shit, and the whole careful argument I’ve been building—about timing, responsibility, not making her life harder—folds into itself.
Because none of it accounts for this.
For her choosing me.
She smells like lemonade every time she walks into a room.
She’s like the human version of the sun, and every time I’m with her, it feels so warm.
And she keeps scrunching that nose.
Shit.
“Yellow” by Coldplay starts drifting through the speakers inside the inn, and I glance over her shoulder. Jasper is standing in the doorway, with both thumbs up, an enormous grin, and zero subtlety.
The laugh that escapes me startles both of us.
Lennon turns to look behind her, then back at me. “What’s funny?”
I shake my head once.
“Jasper’s cards were right after all.”
She goes still.
The fairy lights sway in the breeze, inside, the song keeps going, and my hands come up, and for a breath, I hesitate, giving her time to move away if she wants to.
She doesn’t, not even a fraction.
I take her face in both hands.
Her skin is soft and warm under my palms, and she leans into the touch when I bring my forehead down to rest against hers.
We stay there, breathing the same air.
Her lashes flutter. “Nev.”
I let my nose drag slowly up the back of hers, then down again, and when I stop, I’m close enough to feel the small hitch in her breath against my mouth.
“I can’t take one more second,” I murmur softly. “Without your lips on mine.”
She gasps…
… and I kiss the gasp right off her mouth.