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I paused. I wasn’tinschool. Hadn’t been for, oh, seven years now. I had graduated from the New York Ballet School at eighteen, like any other high school, and gone straight into the New York Ballet Company rather than attend college.
“Luke,” I said slowly, hoping I was somehow misunderstanding everything. “You know I’m not in school anymore, right? I’m twenty-five. I know you know this, because I am the same age as Ethan. Who is also twenty-five.”
The befuddled look on his face suggested that he didnotknow this. Like maybe it was brand new information, actually, that his younger brother was no longer a child. Which was, interestingly, right in line with certain gripes Ethan had levied drunkenly from my couch when he had visited me last year.
“Of course I know that.” But he looked uncertain. “How is the ballet, Bethany?”
“Great,” I said. “Considering. How is…” I cocked my head. I didn’t know much about him, other than he was hot enough to melt steel and he had an attack goat, apparently. “How is the bar?”
“Great.” Still polite. Still distant. So casually cruel, with no regard at all for the fact that he had, in the brief span of five minutes, fulfilled my secret girlhood fantasies and then promptly set them on fire.
“Great,” I echoed. And hated myself for it. Now he would think I was a childandboring. A boring child. If a black hole had miraculously appeared at my feet, I would have happily jetéd into it.
He rocked back on his heels. “Little Bethany Albright, home to Hart’s Ridge.” He shook his head as though he couldn’t quite wrap his mind around it.
It was possible he meantlittleto refer to my stature. I was barely five foot six with a dancer’s slim build. He towered over me by a good seven inches and was nearly twice as broad. But no. That headshake made it clear.Littlemeantyoung. Luke still saw me as a child, never mind that I had been a full ass adult going on seven years now. Never mind that my body was still humming with very unchildlike feelings from being in his arms.
I regarded him with a mixture of rage and despair before finally squaring my shoulders. “I’m going inside to find Ethan,” I announced. Ethan was why I was here, after all. Nothim. “And get a drink,” I added, daring him to contradict me.
I was almost disappointed when he merely raised his eyebrows and let me pass, falling into step behind me. “Ethan will be excited to see you,” he said.
I paused on the front stoop, under the overhang, to brush the snow off my coat and kick the wetness from my boots. Then I removed my green knit beanie and shook out my hair, fluffing it up to counteract the dreaded hat hair. “Sure, not that he’ll show it for even a second.”
When Luke didn’t agree right away, I glanced up questioningly and found him staring a few inches above my head. I tilted my chin back, following his gaze to the small bunch of greenery with white berries hanging from a pine beam.
“Mistletoe,” I said. “That means you have to kiss me.” Maybe I shouldn’t have said it, but how could I resist? This was Luke Buchanan. Under the mistletoe with me. I was never going to have this chance again.
He frowned at me, like somehow it wasmyfault mistletoe was hanging in the doorway of his bar. Something simmered in his gaze. It filled the space between us, turning the cold air molten. I could feel that heat sink into me, setting my insides thrumming with anticipation. I held my breath as his face came closer to mine.
And then, when we were nearly nose to nose, he tilted his head. His lips landed on my cheek, a quick press of warmth, there and gone again before I fully comprehended what had happened.
Without my permission, my fingers flew to my cheek as I stared up at him.
Luke Buchanan had kissed me on the cheek.
Like I was a goddamnchild.
The polite smile was back on his face. I wanted to smack it off again.
“I’ll tell Ethan you’re here.” He stepped around me and disappeared into the bar, leaving me alone under the mistletoe.
Humiliated.
FuckingLuke.
Chapter 3
Bethany
Thescentofbaconpulled me from my sleep, interrupting a disturbing dream of being chased by a goat carrying a bundle of mistletoe in its mouth. My stomach rumbled. I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and stretched. It was slightly disconcerting to wake up to smells and sounds I hadn’t experienced in nearly a decade, in the small bedroom that hadn’t changed since I was sixteen. A poster of Misty Copeland decorated one wall. On the other was a corkboard filled with ballet programs and photos of me and Ethan.
After a quick trip to the bathroom—surprise! My period was back, for the second month in a row, but of course there were no supplies in the house and I hadn’t brought any with me, so I wadded toilet paper into a makeshift pad and hoped for the best—I made my way downstairs for breakfast.
Mom scootched back from the kitchen table, where she was reading the morning news on her laptop, when she saw me. “You’re awake. Let me make you some oatmeal.”
“Thanks.” I claimed one of the four chairs at the oval oak dining table and eyeballed the plate of bacon in the center of the table. “Is Dad already at work?”
My dad, David, had been a farmer like his own father and grandfather, until—like many small dairy farms in North Carolina—it was no longer financially feasible. After that he had worked at the chicken processing factory just outside of Hart’s Ridge. When the factory had closed a few years ago, he had been one of the lucky few who had managed to find new work in town. He had been working nine to five at the credit union ever since, a job he loved or loathed depending on whether he was giving a friend a lifeline or destroying his last hope.
