Chapter 3
I Got You, Babe
Joss. Joss, honey …”
The words were gentle yet persistent as they wove into a deep sleep that was trying to drag me back under its lulling oblivion.
“You need to wake up.”
A hand landed on my shoulder, shaking me awake just as I registered the source of the voice.
It was my dad’s. No, Reece’s. No, that wasn’t right either. Judah’s. Jude.
I should call him Judas, perhaps the most notorious traitor in all of history—and a fitting nickname for this asshole.
“Honey, you overslept again. You’re going to be late for school if you don’t get up and get moving right now.”
His weight lifted from the bed—my bed, so familiar in feel and scent—as he rose. Completely emotionally spent after hours of scouring the files our faux parents had kept on us since before our conceptions, I’d fallen asleep in Hunt’s sleepover room, next to my friends …
Not here. Not in this house. And not in this bed.
Thus the cloying grogginess that hung heavy in my muscles and head had nothing to do with a possible few too many beers, and everything to do with the lying, scheming scumbags we were forced to share houses with.
Our faux parents must have drugged us—again—then transported us to our own beds—also again—where they were back to pretending nothing untoward had happened.
As if good parents in wholesome, quaint neighborhoods like our Periwinkle Hill drugged their kids and pretended their lives were completely different allllll the time.
I half expected the song “I Got You, Babe” to begin blaring through my alarm, marking the start of yet another Groundhog Day loop we couldn’t escape.
Another weight shifted on the bed and Bobo’s wet nose pressed to the crook of my neck, snuffling. For my sweet pittie, I opened my eyes and smiled.
“Hey there, boy,” I cooed down at him, my voice a telling rasp.
How many times had they drugged us with who knew what?
We were apparently some kind of immortals, sure—crazy as crazy got, but the concept was growing on me—and we had superior healing, my friends especially—but that was no justification for exacting such a heavy toll on our bodies on a regular basis.
It was all just so majorly fucked-up.
I leaned over Bobo, kissing his head and scratching behind his ears and under his chin, two of his main favorite spots. “You’re such a good boy, aren’t you?”
Bobo’s tail wagged in eager agreement, even though he was theoretically supposed to sleep in his bed at the foot of mine instead of next to me.
Lately I hadn’t been able to resist the comfort of having him beside me.
There was a very short list of people whom I could count on never to betray me, and he was one of them—dog or not.
My breath hitched. As the effects of whatever drug receded, I grew more alert. Which meant my thoughts speared toward Griffin. Did this morning’s bait and switch have something to do with him? Had he finished … regenerating?
I disguised my sharp inhale with noisy kisses for my dog and glanced up at Judas leaning casually against my threshold. His hair was damp, his cheeks flushed, suggesting he’d recently returned from his morning run—in time to wake his pretend daughter from her pretend sleep, of course.
None of us had ever accused our parents of not giving their all to this charade.
Had the hypnosis not glitched and failed to properly “reboot” us, I didn’t even want to consider how long it might have taken us to discover what was really going on.
There was that terrifying chance that we might have never caught on, at least not to the full scope of the deception.
Maybe it was true that our parents hadn’t started out with the intention of deceiving us, but they’d been embodying their communal lie for so long that they were pros at it. We hadn’t stood a chance.
“Don’t dilly-dally,” Judas said. “Griffin will be here to pick you up soon.”
My heart thudded. Bobo stopped licking my arm to jerk his head up, canting it to one side, observing me, as if he sensed the change in me.
“And you’ll probably want extra time with him before classes today.” Judas’s expression drooped. Sympathy brimmed in his eyes as he sighed and pushed a hand through his damp hair. “You remember what day today is, right?”
This fucking bullshit again?
“Yeah, I do. The day Mitzi abandoned Griff and Orson.”
I was quick to stuff my face into Bobo’s fur to hide my disgust. Griffin had never had a mom. They’d made one up just to add some tragedy to his backstory.
“That’s right,” he said. “Griffin will need all your support today.”
Play the game, Joss.
I slapped matching sympathy on my face and smiled sadly up at him. “Are you gonna be hanging with Orson today?”
“Yeah. Porter and I are going to take him out to a late lunch, grab some beers, play hooky from work. He needs it.”
“That’s real good of you, Dad.” I listened for signs of my lie and detected none. Maybe all it took was practice. Our parents had decades of it.
Dad shrugged humbly. “That’s what friends do for each other.” His eyes danced with mischief. “Though you and Griff are more than friends, huh?”
For an instant my jaw went slack. But I pulled myself together quickly. When he waggled his brows teasingly at me, I pretended to blush while shooing him from my room.
He scooted out with a trail of laughter so convincing I briefly wondered if our parents had missed their calling. They would have killed it as actors.
I bolted from bed so quickly that Bobo leapt off after me with an excited bark. I whipped around toward him.
“Bobo, no!”
He stilled, confused.
I wasn’t supposed to remember that Bobo and I had leapt from a rapidly moving Clyde, hitting the pavement hard before rolling. But his body would. He’d broken his leg and recovered without the benefit of paranormal healing abilities.
He stared up at me, tilting his head from side to side, and whined.
My shoulders slumped. I squatted next to him, scratching again behind his ears.
“You did nothing wrong, boy. You’re such a good dog. I just don’t want you to get hurt, that’s all.”
He whined again. I gave him some more good scratches, then stood. Excited tingles already raced through my body.
“I’ve gotta hurry for Griff.”
I got ready for school in record time. When the growl of a well-tuned engine drew near—not the one I recognized as Clyde’s, since the most recent version of Clyde had been blown to bits along with Griff—I bounced while rubbing absently at my bicep.
No doubt the unexplained soreness was from last night’s nonconsensual shot.
Too anxious to wait, I started walking up my long drive, and when Griffin drew to a stop beside me, I was far enough away from the house that I didn’t have to worry about my superspy not-parents reading into my expression—I didn’t think, anyway.
Maybe they’d hidden cameras in the car’s interior, but probably not on the outside.
As far back as my memory went, Clyde had originally been a shiny silver. Then the car was black. This replacement Mustang was silver, but a more matte paint job than what Griff had used.
The passenger-side window was already lowered, and Griffin leaned across the gearshift to gaze up at me.
His smile was vibrant and devilish and absolutely fucking gorgeous.
It lit up his face, making the many forest shades of his hazel eyes dance.
Man, Griff was the hottest dude I’d ever seen in my entire life.
“Hey, baby,” he said in that deep rumbly voice of his that made my toes curl that morning. “You’re looking especially fine today.”
I had so much I wanted to say to him. All that slipped out was a squeak as I gawped at him, unable to stop taking in the radiance that was Griffin Conway come back to life in one glorious, stunning whole. The man was making my insides smolder simply by existing.
His brow furrowed. “You all right?”
That was my cue to put on a show for anyone listening. After swallowing, I nodded. “Yep.” But I sounded like I’d just sucked the helium out of a balloon.
I cleared my throat. “Just happy to see you is all.”
He hummed appreciatively, eyeing me up and down. “Before you ask if that’s a rocket in my pocket or I’m just happy to see you too, it’s both.”
He winked, and I swear I fucking swooned. My vision actually wobbled for a fast second.
Me, swooning. Who even was I anymore?
I finally managed a chuckle and lowered myself into shotgun. I was stashing my bag alongside my feet when Griff shifted Clyde into neutral and tugged on the emergency brake. I was about to ask him what he was doing when his hands wove behind my neck and guided me toward him.
His lips were on mine before I registered he was about to kiss me. His lips were full and soft, warm and absolutely freaking delightful.
A growl slipped from me, buzzing against our joined mouths.
I wrapped my arms around his shoulders, tugging him closer.
Slid across the leather of my seat as I parted my mouth, inviting our tongues to dance, and kissed him and kissed him and fucking kissed him.
I kissed him until I could almost forget watching his car explode into nauseating flames, until my heart felt less broken and we were both panting.
The cool fall day felt hot, my skin flushed beneath all the stupid clothes that separated my skin from his.
He groaned without breaking our kiss. I moaned back, dragging myself onto his lap, uncaring that the fit was tight. I ran my hands over his shoulders, chest, and back. Wove my fingers into his hair, tugging on the strands, holding him tightly to me.
Mine, mine, mine, grumbled a feral part of me I was only now coming to recognize.
I shifted my legs to better straddle him. He moaned again, kissed me even harder, and rolled his hips up to meet mine. His dick was gloriously hard through his jeans.
Breathing heavily, he pulled our mouths apart, pressing his forehead to mine.