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Looking back, I’m not really sure. I had most of my focus geared toward relaxing my face muscles and hoping to God that I didn’t accidentally forget my deodorant this morning.

“Not much. Afterward he asked what I was going to do, but that was it. I think he may have felt awkward because he didn’t stick around for long after.”

Neither of them has much to say about it, and their silence confuses me even more.

Chapter Twenty-Four Knox

Felicity is curled against me in the hammock, both of us swaying gently while a bunch of lopsided pumpkins stare up from the grass like judgmental spectators. The late-afternoon sun filters through the oak leaves overhead, turning the whole backyard golden. Her knee keeps brushing mine, and every time it happens, my brain short-circuits.

“You’re messing my paint up,” she says, flicking orange paint onto her pumpkin’s crooked smile.

“You messed it up way before I did,” I argue.

“Look at my ghost,” she whines and flips the pumpkin around. “He’s so sad.”

“That’s not my fault.”

“Here.” She leans over, hair spilling across my chest, and presses the tip of her pink brush onto the top of my Pac-Man pumpkin. “Now you have Mrs. Pac-Man.”

I dip my finger into yellow paint and swipe it across her cheek. “Now you’re Mrs. Pac-Man.”

She gasps, open-mouthed, hand frozen midair. “Did you just—”

I grin. “I did.”

“Oh, it’s on.”

Her brush comes for me—but she misses my jaw and gets the side of my neck instead. Warm bristles drag a streak of neon pink down to my collarbone. I feel like she just traced me with her fingertip.

I retaliate before I can think. A thumb to her chin. A smear down her throat.

Her breath catches—actually catches—and I watch her swallow, her pulse darting under my paint-stained touch.

So pretty.

Too pretty.

She lunges for my face, laughing, and the hammock swings violently, sending us sliding half on top of each other. Her leg tangles with mine, her palm landing right over my ribs. She smells like apples and acrylic paint and October wind and everything I want too much.

“Take it back,” she says breathlessly.

“Never,” I say, equally breathless.

Her nose brushes mine by accident. Neither of us moves. The whole world tilts with the hammock, slow and dizzy, like it’s encouraging us. For one stupid second, I almost kiss her—bright paint and all.

And then—

The storm door slams open.

We jolt apart like we’ve been hit with a cattle prod while Riley stands on the porch, arms crossed, wearing the exact expression a principal would have when they catch kids smoking weed behind the gym.

I feel like I’ve been caught sneaking candy into a movie theater…or worse.

“Evening, Riley,” I say, trying to sit up. The hammock folds like a taco around me.

“Knox. Flick.”

Felicity clears her throat. “Hi.”