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“There’s an open room,” the girl with the pink hair said. “It’s the smallest one, sorry. It was first come, first serve. Nobody wanted the basement. Go figure.”
“One room?” I said. “That won’t work. We needed two. Come on, Kenzie.”
“Really?” Kenzie said. “Are you afraid you’ll catch my cooties, Sebastian?” She wrapped her arms around mine and gave me a hug she probably meant as a playful tease. All it did was wake up the barely dormant hunger I had for her at all times. My nostrils flared, but my mood brightened when I saw the sour way Reggie was looking at us now. I imagined he could feel his chances of sleeping with Kenzie plummeting by the minute.
“But,” she said. “If you’re too much of a prude to share a room with me, I guess you could just head back to North Carolina and I’ll take it for myself.”
All I had to do was imagine Reggie slipping into her room at night or trying to soften her up with a few drinks to make my decision. “I need to go get my bag out of the trunk,” I snapped.
Kenzie clapped her hands excitedly.
“Wow,” pink hair said. “I can’t believe I’m going to be at a writer’s retreat with Sebastian St. James. My TikTok is going to explode.” She frowned at herself. “Maybe if authoring doesn’t work out, I could be an influencer?”
I ignored all of them and headed for the car. This was clearly a mistake, but I was starting to get used to hearing those words in my head when it came to Kenzie Rosenthal.
21
Kenzie
I clutched a cup of hot chocolate between my palms and gently blew away some of the steam. I was on the back patio of the cabin and Sebastian was downstairs, moodily setting up our room. The weather had been perfect before the sun set, but night coupled with the high altitude meant it was getting chillier by the minute.
It turned out we were going to be sharing our little cabin with five other authors. We met the remaining three writers when we came inside while a big man named Cooney brewed us some hot chocolate. We got introductions while we waited.
There was Reggie, the creepy one who had been trying to hit on me outside. He was trying to write the next Great American novel, or something pretentious like that.
The girl with pink hair was Astaire. She wrote paranormal erotica, which sounded like it involved ghost sex. She was chronicling her visit for her social media followers, which I suspected was more important to her than the writing part.
There was a husband and wife duo who wrote under a shared pen name and put out thrillers. Neither of them seemed very interested in chatting and disappeared upstairs shortly after we came in.
The last writer was Cooney, if that was even his real name. He was large with a very slight accent I couldn’t place, long luxurious curly hair, and rounded features that seemed to enhance his permanently upbeat mood. He was the one making the hot chocolate and insisting we all have some to warm up.
Cooney followed me out to the back patio with a cup of his own between his large hands. “Sebastian St. James, huh? How’d you two even meet?”
I gave the hot chocolate a cautious sip. It only slightly burned my gums and the roof of my mouth. Close enough, I thought, chugging more of it. It was delicious, with a note of some subtle addition I’d never tasted in hot chocolate but couldn’t quite identify.
“I’m cat sitting for him,” I said, conveniently skipping all the craziness before that point. And the fact that I wasn’t really his cat sitter anymore.
Cooney pursed his lips, leaning on the railing of the back patio. The view in front of us was incredible. We had a straight shot view down a mountain valley that eventually flattened out to reveal the distant, pin-prick lights of a town. “I didn’t see a cat carrier,” he said.
“Well, that’s because someone kidnapped the cat. It was my brother,” I added when I saw his confused face. I waved my hand. “Honestly, it doesn’t really make much sense to me, either. Basically, I’m supposed to be his road butler, or something like that. But I’m also an aspiring writer, so I’m hoping to use the downtime for personal work.”
“And you two are an item?”
I scoffed. “If we’re an item, then we’re damaged goods.”
“Ooh, complicated, huh? Tell me more.”
“It’s getting late,” Sebastian said. His voice came so suddenly and unexpectedly that Cooney and I both jolted upright. I nearly spilled my drink.
I glanced at my flip phone. “It’s barely ten.”
“Are you here to write or socialize?” he asked.
I slid my eyes to Cooney and tried to discreetly give him a “this is exactly the kinda shit I’ve been dealing with” look. He bit back a smile and gave me a little nod.
