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Grayson crouches down in front of me, and I barely have time to set the keyboard aside before his hand finds my jaw and tilts my face up. Then his mouth finds mine, and this kiss is nothing like the doorway peck or the soft forehead kiss or any of the gentle versions. This is the other kind. The kind that starts at the base of my spine and works upward. His thumb presses into the hinge of my jaw and his other hand spreads flat against the small of my back and pulls me into him, and I grab the front of his jeans because I need something to hold onto as the floor tilts slightly.

“You gotta stop writing songs about me,” he murmurs, his mouth still close enough that I can feel the words. “It’s fucking with my head.”

“I like fucking with your head,” I whisper against his lips.

The sound that comes out of him is low and deliberate and does exactly what it is designed to do. Then his hands find my waist, and he lifts me off the floor like I weigh nothing, which has always been one of the more devastating things about him, and I wrap my legs around him on instinct, and he carries me to the bed.

20

SIENNA

“I just don’t understand,” Grayson says, from the driver’s seat, his eyes darting between the road and his rearview mirror. “Why would they put a jawbreaker in her mouth? What is the logic?”

“Because it’s a fake kidnapping, Gray,” Iris says from the backseat, her feet up on the center console between the two front seats, her half-eaten bag of popcorn in her lap. “They need her to not be able to scream. It’s a prop of the kidnapping.”

“It’s a large piece of candy,” Grayson returns. “They should’ve known she was going to suffocate. They should’ve taped her mouth shut and used a fucking cloth. Not a jawbreaker.”

“It’s a movie from 1999,” Iris says, in the tone she uses when she has been through a conversation before and is not surprised to be in it again. “They wanted to make something just as crazy as Heathers.”

The drive-in was Iris’s idea. She found it in a listings newsletter she gets for Maine events and texted us both separately before either of us could make other plans, which is the Iris Douglas method of ensuring attendance. By the time I saw the text, Grayson had already confirmed, and that was the end of the discussion. We bought gas station candy and drove forty minutes to a field off the highway where they screen movies on a white canvas rigged between two telephone poles, and we sat in the bed of the truck, in camp chairs with our feet up on the gate, and watched Jawbreaker on a screen the size of a house. And for two hours, I didn’t think about contracts or lawyers or dollar signs or the fact that I have six days left.

Six days.

I look at the reflection of my own face in the passenger window and hold that number in my chest for a moment, turning it over.

“Yeah, but Heathers made sense,” Grayson says, turning onto Route 9.

“Jawbreaker is so much better,” Iris points out. “They got away with it for the whole movie.”

“I mean, he was a serial killer,” I point out, and Iris huffs in agreement. “The girls in Jawbreaker were freaking out over one girl.”

“One very popular girl,” she says, leaning forward between the seats.

“Hey, Jason killed the most popular girl and the two hottest jocks. I say he’s better,” Grayson says.

“I got to agree with Gray,” I say, sucking in a sharp breath.

Iris taps my shoulder and pouts as she throws her body back. “Just because you guys are fucking doesn’t mean you have to agree with him.”

“I’m agreeing with him because he’s right. Besides, Jason Dean is literally my 90s crush,” I correct.

Iris sighs dreamily. “To love a psycho.”

I giggle, tucking my chin so no one sees how sad my smile is. Six days before I have to make a decision or the decision gets made for me. Grayson has been calling Douglas Corp legal every morning, and I’ve been pretending not to notice, and Iris doesn’t know any of it because I haven’t told her. I’m not going to tell her because the last thing I want is Iris trying to fix it too.

I don’t want either of them to fix it. I just don’t want to leave her or Gray, and I’ve hardly seen Grandma Mary. I want to stay here and write music and feel like myself again.

We pull into the house drive, and Iris is already unlocking her phone before the truck has fully stopped, squinting at the screen.

“Oh,” she says, looking at me through the rearview mirror with sneaky eyes which means Dom is on the phone. “I have to take this.”

I snicker, sliding out of the car and folding the seat up, so she can slide out the back. We took Grayson’s family pickup truck to the movies. The one I always loved with an open trunk that we filled with pillows and blankets.

Iris slides out, her popcorn bag tucked under her arm and pauses to wave her finger at her brother. “Gray, your opinion is wrong as usual. But thanks for the movie you two. Love ya!”

The door closes behind her before we can say ‘love you’ back, and she is across the porch and through the front door, her voice already rising in greeting.

“So, how do you want to kill the rest of the night?” I ask, leaning my head against the headrest.