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Pulling away, I stared at the man who pulled the ground from under me, who had kissed me like he wanted to devour me, but now he was looking at me as if I had grown two heads.
Why?
We stared at each other in the midnight shadows, our breaths swirling in the cooling air. The fire that had once been in his eyes was gone and replaced with cold detachment. Confused, I yanked his mask down and stopped dead.
That was why his eyes were familiar…
That was why I knew his voice…
Or why his hands were so recognizable…
Ethan Vega had kissed me. With passion, with desire, with fiery want…and now he was a block of ice. My lips were still tingling as I stepped away, and my back met the old iron post. “… It's you.”
His lips thinned. “This was a mistake.”
I didn’t know if I should be offended or disgusted.
A second ago, he had held me as if I were a precious treasure he didn’t want to let slip away… now, I was sure he wanted nothing more than to put a few miles between us. Seeing Ethan had made the woozy feeling in my head vanish like a lousy booty call would do the morning after the deed was done.
“Yeah, it was,” I replied. “But not because of what you think.”
Before he could say something, I turned around and wound my way through the crowd, hell-bent on getting away from him, even while, in the back of my head, I knew he would never follow me.
I knew his family and mine didn’t get along, but somehow, I didn’t share the same level of animosity and aversion he had towards me. The only thing I had towards him was professional rivalry. To be fair, when I was younger, I had stolen looks across the various rooms at Ethan, from the days he’d been a beanpole to when he’d shot up; his shoulders had gotten broader, and his jaw had gotten squarer. The honey blond in his hair had vanished, and it was utterly bleached-blond from the sun.
I’d had a crush on him that was bound to go nowhere.
But I still didn’t hate him,
“He hates me, though,” I mumbled while slipping in line for a food truck. “More than he should. More than is reasonable. It's like he thinks my family is a fungus that won’t go away, and it’s getting under his skin.”
“Mia?” Ryan called over, his tall form visible over the heads of five people while he lifted a bottle of cider in the air. “C’mere.”
I paid for my kabab and then went to join him and his friends, all of whom were at least four inches to a foot taller than me. “Caleb, Josh, Ian,” I nodded to the guys. “Are you having fun?”
“Depends on what you mean by fun,” Ryan snorted, then gestured with his bottle to the two near him. “These geniuses—”
“Genii,” Caleb said.
“—decided to try and finally find out what is in Old Man Mitchell’s shed,” Ryan replied. “They had a plan too: strip to their underwear, slather themselves in lard and slip through the fence, throw corn to distract his guard rooster, and jimmy the lock on the shed.”
My brows shot up. “How far did you get before he came out with his shotgun?”
“Five feet from the barn,” Caleb grinned. “He grabbed my ear, forced me to wash up and get dressed, scolded me like I was two, and sent me back here.”
“I got a bit further,” Ian laughed, “But he got me too.”
“I don’t know why you even want to try,” I shrugged. “We all know not to mess with the old man. He’s got a reputation for a reason.”
“But everyone wants to know what’s in that shed,” Josh replied, fixing his glasses. “And I mean everyone, from when we were kids. Is it moonshine, is it tools, is it a dead body? We want to know.”
“It’s probably feed for his chickens and a deep freezer for when he hunts deer,” I replied. “You’re risking your necks for nothing.”
“No, no,” Caleb shook his head, “There is street cred to be won. Everyone wants to know what’s in that shed, and the person who finds it isKing.”
I snorted—kids.
“What’s on the cider label, Ryan?” I asked.
