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Piper pulls it out from between my lips before I can even get a full puff.
“Cougar? Who’s Cougar?” Reese asks as she leans forward.
Piper hogs the tension breaker.
“She’s Kai’s cougar,” Hale tells her.
Piper starts coughing so hard that she has to lean forward and start rocking. I thought she was already getting better with smoking it. Maybe she’d be better off with edibles.
“Oh my damn,” she says so quietly I almost don’t hear it.
“Sorry, did you say she’s Kai’s cougar? And you call her Cougar?” Reese asks as she blinks a few times.
“Yeah, she usually stays at my cabin, but sometimes she heads to her own place because she needs her space too,” I tell them, deciding it’s a safer topic.
“Alright then,” Piper says with a firm nod. “I think I’m tired and ready for bed, and we’re sitting on my bed since it’s my turn to hit the couch tonight,” she adds.
“Probably a good idea. We start sledding at sunrise,” I say as I stand and stretch, deciding I’ll do more show than tell tomorrow and come out on a winning side.
“I’m not tired yet, and you said it’s a long drive back to your side of the lake. Now you’ve smoked a lot of weed, and it’s too dangerous to be driving,” Reese tells Hale. “Why don’t you stay over?”
“Are you serious?” Piper hisses.
Reese just grins as Hale’s eyes widen like he’s as surprised as I am right now.
“Yeah. I am,” Reese goes on as she stands and takes Hale’s hand. “Unless you don’t want—”
Hale is off the couch and grinning like a fucking dick in the next instant. “I’m game.”
She just smiles bigger.
Piper is staring down at her fingernails and tapping her foot like she’s impatient for this to all be over.
I continue standing like the only chump who’s getting kicked out. I’m never going to hear the end of this. Hale fucking Vincent has more game than I do.
I don’t think I’m getting that end-of-the-date kiss this time.
The door shuts to the bedroom, and I hear muffled voices coming through the walls as I run a hand through my hair. I don’t get the same concerned invite.
“No one else drives these roads, and my cabin isn’t all that far away. I’ll see you tomorrow. Bring a helmet,” I tell her as I head toward the door.
I have no idea what the sound she makes means, but she’s stretching out on the couch and pulling the blanket up to her throat. Maybe I should have done the dishes or something.
“Thanks for saving my life, Kai Wilder,” she murmurs sleepily.
Or…maybe she really is just tired.
Wild Ones Tip #596
Wild animals are our closest neighbors and sometimes our friends. This sums up the amount of manners you should expect us to have.
Chapter 5
PIPER
*******
“No. Absolutely not. Have you seriously lost your mind? You actually let him spend the night?!” I whisper-yell as I glare at Reese.
I thought she’d wig out and come to her senses before falling asleep.
She waggles her eyebrows as she sips her coffee. “All we did was talk,” she quips.
“Sure. That’s exactly why you found a ‘sexy mountain man’ who brings a fresh kill to clean and cook to a first date. To talk,” I tell her very dryly.
She just grins a little more as she leans a hip against the counter and takes another slow sip of her coffee.
“You’re being judgmental,” she finally says very seriously. “Give the guy a chance. We’re taking a break from our real selves, remember? That’s what this trip is all about. That and getting to know the woman we had no right to snub our entire lives. Remember those cathartic tears the night of our joined epiphany?” she says, doing that manipulative thing she usually does so well.
“Drug dealer,” I remind her.
“When alcohol was going through prohibition, the bootleggers went down in history. Currently, our country is in sort of the same situation with marijuana. It’s a small, family-run, backwoods sort of setup. Not the Cartel, Piper. We have more skeletons in the family closet than either of them,” she says, still manipulating me.
“Don’t forget the cougar he’s apparently keeping up with his drug money. The presumably older woman they referred to in name as Cougar.”
“If the woman in question is okay with being nicknamed Cougar, then who are you to judge their presumably open relationship and their labels?” she points out.
“You can’t reason everything. There has to be boundaries without sounding like a judgmental shrew,” I loudly whisper in that oxymoronic way, as I do some very dramatic gesturing with my hands.
“Fine. Do whatever you want. I’m doing what we said we came here to do.”
“We didn’t say we were coming to screw some agricultural mountain men,” I remind her very dryly.
“Hale happens to have his own YouTube channel where he hosts game tutorials and stuff. No social media, though. It’s set up under his sister’s name, since she’s the one who created it for him originally without realizing how it’d grow. He makes a modest living off of it that he enjoys immensely,” she tells me with a growing smile. “He loves the perks of getting to play a lot of the games early and all the free stuff some of the gaming companies send his way.”
