Page 170

“You’re not with him.”

“I came with him.”

“Leave with me.”

“I can’t. I’m here with him. Like, this was my idea.” She gestures at our surroundings.

A bonfire’s not gonna fix her relationship. Especially if she spends it with me.

“I have a better idea.”

Bracing myself with an elbow above Kota’s head, I’m just closing the distance when two girls run out of the cabin, screaming.

Kota pushes me the same time I straighten.

“What’s going on?” I ask them, my defenses already up.

“There’s a…” one girl starts to say to me, pointing behind her, before addressing her friend, “Holy bejesus. Did you see it?”

All wide-eyed, her friend shakes her head. “I thought it was going to suck out our souls.”

The two run off squealing like a couple of banshees.

“What are they talking about?”

“Sounds like a ghost,” Kota says.

I side-eye her. “You’re lying.”

“I don’t know. I didn’t see it. The house does look haunted though.”

Didn’t she compare me to a haunted house once?

“Wanna go inside? See if we can get your heart racing?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Why else are we hanging out next to it?”

“The smoke was getting to me. Why are you here?”

“Your ex was getting to me.”

The bounce of my eyebrows dares her to correct me. She broke up with him. He is her ex.

“He’s probably wondering where I am.”

Is he?

“I don’t see him looking for you.”

“How could you when you haven’t taken your eyes off me all night?”

I smile. She knew I was watching her.

Because she watches me, too.

Biting my bottom lip with my canine, I give her a once-over. The breeze rustles the bottom of her light blue sundress, making the thin material flutter against those toned thighs of hers, tempting me, teasing me, killing me.