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LISS
“Seen Ri?” I asked Danny as he emerged from the garage, struggling with the eight bottles of soda he had wedged against his bare chest.
Danny brought his distracted hazel-green eyes to mine as the light breeze danced his patterned orange shorts around his legs. “Yeah, Liss, she’s in the garage. Got her chained up in there.”
I flattened my lips. “Helpful.”
He paused and flashed a grin, seemingly amused with himself. I reached out and plucked one bottle from his grip, sending two others bouncing to the ground.
“Ah, now look what you did!” he muttered, shaking his head.
“Just trying to help, Dan,” I said with a smirk. “Would you look at that, we both fucking suck at it.”
“Point made, Ice Princess.” He wrapped one arm tight around the bottles in his arms and tried to retrieve the two from the ground.
“I prefer Snow Queen,” I muttered, bending down to pick them up and striding past him toward the house.
He frowned, following me. “What?”
“Nothing.” I waved a hand, brushing him off and settling the bottles on the countertop before moving back through the doors. “If you see Ri, tell her I’m out by the pool, yeah?”
“Will do.”
“Hey, Liss.”
I spun to the sound of my name being called and spotted Sara Greyson sitting alone on the edge of the pool a few feet away, her feet dangling in the water. Sara and her mom moved to town last summer when her mom took up with Jason Connolly’s dad. After almost a year here, she still sported that deer in the headlights look.
“Who knew you had boobs?” I teased as I dropped down beside her.
Her cheeks reddened as she lifted her arms to cover her chest. Tendrils of dark, tousled hair had escaped her loose bun, and they curled over her shoulders. Sara was one of those naturally pretty people. No bells or whistles. Nothing fake or enhanced. And the outside reflected the inside; she was sweet as spun sugar. Which was why I’d taken her under my wing last year when the vultures descended. Raya Mitchell and her followers would have chewed her up and spat her out before breakfast.
“I feel awkward,” she admitted, fidgeting with the strings of her bikini top.
“Don’t.” I met her eyes. “You’re hot. Own it.”
She looked uncertain, but let her arms fall to her sides. The girl was still stiff as a board, but it was something.
“Did you get your acceptance letter?” I asked.
Shifting to face me, she nodded with a bright smile. “I did. Heading back to Florida in the fall.” As soon as the words left her mouth, her shiny smile dimmed, those chocolate brown eyes clouding.
“That’s good, right?” I asked, picking up on the mixed reaction.
“Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Just… well… I spent the better part of a year hating the idea of this place, and now the thought of leaving…” She let the words drift off and placed her palms flat on the ground beside her thighs, turning her gaze down to look at the water. The smile she offered when her head came back up seemed forced. “It’s not what I expected, is all.”
I leaned back on my hands and bobbed my head. “This place grows on you, huh?”
Sara’s gaze floated over my shoulder. “Yeah, something like that.”
“Like mold,” I quipped, and she chuckled.
Gripping the hem of my cover-up, I tugged the sheer material up and over my head. Chin down, I righted the scraps of gold mesh material on my breasts until everything looked sufficiently covered, and then I looked up… and found a pair of hooded ocean-blue eyes glued to my chest from across the pool.
Air puffed out of my nose and I cocked my head, waiting with a glower on my face for Pretty Boy to realize how busted he was. It took a solid minute, a whole sixty-fucking-seconds, but his gaze finally tracked up and landed on mine. Instead of looking away in shame—like I expected him to, like he should have done—that asshole wagged his brows up and down then dragged his teeth over his bottom lip. His biceps flexed in a fluid motion as he stretched his arms out along the edge of the pool and settled back with a lazy grin.
I narrowed my eyes, refusing to look away. Damned if I’d break first. He was the reprobate who couldn’t keep his pervy eyes in his head.
Charged seconds ticked by in which neither of us so much as blinked as this battle of wills continued to play out. But the longer we stared, the darker Leon’s eyes grew, and the air between us seemed to fizz with a palpable tension that pricked at the surface of my skin.
