Page 52
Alicia visibly rallied, however, drawing in a deep breath and sitting up a little straighter when she finally looked at me again. “You know, the neighborhood association around here hosts a Halloween block party every year. It’s coming up next Saturday and it’s a huge deal. The whole street gets shut down, there’s a parade for the kids, and everyone decorates their porches.”
“They decorate their porches?” I repeated slowly, raising an eyebrow as I tried imagining it. “Why?”
“There’s an official best decorations competition. A few members of the neighborhood association are the judges and they go around at midnight, deciding who wins.”
“Is there a prize?”
“Yep.” She grinned. “A hundred-dollar gift card to Sammy’s Pizzeria down the street.”
My brain grabbed onto that piece of information like it was a life raft. There was going to be a competition, and not just a silly little everyone wins kind of situation but a structured event with a clear winner and definitive losers.
My jaw tightened as I let my hypercompetitive instincts take the wheel. They’d been bred into every Thayer from birth, and when we competed, we won. This would be no different. “Okay, then. We’re getting that gift card this year. Guaranteed.”
Alicia laughed. “Trust me, I’ve tried in the past, but it’s pretty hard. People on this block take it super seriously. They go all out.”
“Now that I know about it, so will I,” I said firmly. “I don’t participate in anything to lose and it’s mandatory, right? If your house is on this block, your porch gets judged.”
“Yeah, but thrift store decorations won’t cut it,” she explained lightly. “Stringing up fake cobwebs and carving a couple of sad pumpkins won’t even get us in the top ten. When I say people take it seriously, what I mean is that they throw a ton of money at it.”
I stood up straight and nodded. “That’s fine. We’re still going to win that gift card.”
She laughed again, her head shaking as she set her tea down on the counter and looked up at me with an expression that suggested she didn’t think I understood what it would take. “Mr. Henderson across the street won’t allow that to happen. He’s a retired engineer who’s won the past six years in a row. He builds his own animatronics from scratch and has a synchronized light show, Holden. A synchronized light show. There’s no competing with that.”
“All that means is Mr. Henderson has had his turn,” I said, feeling a slow smirk spread across my lips. I probably looked cocky as hell right now, but I didn’t give a shit. This was my first Halloween on the block and I had money now. “He’s going down, Alicia. Isaac is an engineer too. I’ll call him tomorrow and get some ideas. We’re going to destroy Mr. Henderson’s light show and everything else he’s got.”
“You do realize he’s just an old man, right?” she said, deadpan, but the brilliant smile that broke out across her face contradicted the words. “You’re insane if you think we’re going to out-Halloween him, but more than that, you can’t talk about destroying him and sound like you actually mean it.”
“Why not? I’m bringing the fight to him. From now on, we’re going to be the house to beat for this thing. Is it the same at Christmas? I just need to know so I can start planning.”
She chuckled and stood up as we kept bantering back and forth. As we turned off the kitchen lights and headed upstairs to get tucked in for the night, the dark haze lifted from my mind. Not even thoughts about my father were able to distract me from planning the total annihilation of our elderly neighbor.
The easy, playful banter began to change once we reached the landing, though. Suddenly, as soon as our bedrooms came into view, tension soared between us, the realization sinking in for me that it was just her and me in the house tonight.
Tasha was out again and there were beds up here. Right behind those doors only a few feet away.
While I’d deliberately avoided thinking about it until now, Alicia and I had kissed tonight. In the heat of the moment, when that circus freak had told me to do it, I’d only been thinking about getting the hell out of there, but as soon as my mouth had touched hers, whatever intentions I might’ve had to just get it over with had gone straight to shit.
That kiss had taken on a life of its own, so fierce and deep that my body still pulsed at the memory of it. When we stopped in the space between our respective bedroom doors, that pulsing need became like a physical weight pressing down on me.
Alicia paused at her door to look up into my eyes, and unless I was fully losing my mind, she seemed a little out of breath. Definitely more winded than normal after climbing just that one, single set of stairs.
“Goodnight, Holden,” she whispered even though there was no need to speak softly.
I inhaled a deep breath, trying to convince myself that I was imagining things. We hadn’t switched on the lights up here. She was probably just whispering because it was dark. That’s a thing, right? An instinct. It doesn’t mean anything.
“Goodnight, Alicia,” I replied, suddenly realizing I should’ve whispered too, because there was a definite husky quality to my voice that didn’t belong there.
Fuck.
Every piece of logic and every defense mechanism I had were screaming at me to step back, open my door, and maintain the boundaries of our arrangement, but neither of us moved. We just kept standing there, staring at each other in the dark corridor, and then, just as I was about to lift my hand and reach for my door handle, I saw her lips part.
And just like that, something between us snapped, and the next thing I knew, I was on the move.
CHAPTER 26
ALICIA
My heart hammered a frantic, uneven rhythm against my ribs as I stared at Holden standing less than two feet away. His head was tilted slightly. Moonlight filtered in through the window at the end of the hall, casting shadows across the sharp angles of his jawline. While I couldn’t make out the expression in his eyes, it felt like he was staring at me like I was a high-level math problem he couldn’t solve. Or maybe I was just projecting my own feelings onto him, Holden Thayer, my enigma of a husband.
