by Emma Hart
A little shiver cascaded down my spine. Josh brushed his thumb over my jaw, bringing it close to my lower lip where he gently pulled it down before he released it.
“That was a weirdly sexy kiss to follow such a conversation,” I murmured.
“That’s your response?”
“Yes, it narrows it down. And most people would have run away at my very graphic description.”
“I would appreciate not reliving that.”
“It wasn’t enjoyable to describe,” I said dryly. “But I had to get drastic.”
He sat back in the same manner someone would sigh—heavily, with a long-suffering undertone that said they couldn’t believe my shit.
It was fine.
I couldn’t believe my shit, either.
I grabbed our drinks from the coffee table and handed him his with a smile, then selected Schitt’s Creek from the menu.
Maybe him coming wasn’t such a bad thing after all.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN – KINSLEY
rule eighteen: never, ever hide your relationship from your best friends.
and you can’t hide it from old people.
The duck was wearing a dress and a bonnet.
I really wished that was an opening line to a joke, but it wasn’t.
It was, sadly, reality.
It was a lot sadder for the duck than it was for me. That wasn’t to say I wasn’t alarmed, because I was. So, so alarmed, and wondering if it was time for Mabel to see her doctor.
This wasn’t normal.
“What do you think?” she asked, smacking her over-lined light pink lips together. “Isn’t she cute?”
I blinked at the poor, ugly brown duck who looked like she’d stepped out of a children’s novel set in the English countryside, like a Beatrix Potter one.
I was half expecting a rabbit in a little blue jacket to show up any moment.
I glanced around for said rabbit, but when it didn’t appear, turned my attention back to the fancily dressed duck. The bonnet was a frilly white concoction that was an insult to fashion, and I wasn’t even going to focus on the crochet dress with a little apron that matched the bonnet.
“I don’t know what to say,” I said slowly.
“You don’t like her?” Mabel sounded hurt.
“I just don’t know what purpose the dress serves.” I chose my words very carefully. “Isn’t it uncomfortable?”
“No. I made it especially for her.”
Oh, damn. No wonder she was so hurt. “Is that more?” I pointed to the big wicker basket on the nearest bench that looked like it was full of a bunch of duck clothing.
“Yes!” She hobbled over using her cane and sat next to the basket, then pulled out the top outfit. It was a blue floral dress with a matching bonnet, and there were even little pockets on the dress that were adorned with lace and little blue bows.
“You made all these?”
“It was a joint effort,” she said proudly. “We had a sewing class and made these dresses.”
“A sewing class? You needed to be taught? I don’t want to be rude, Mabel, but even I can sew.”
I turned at the sound of Josh’s voice and fought the smile that desperately wanted to break out on my face. “When did you get here?”
“I brought Grandma some things from the store,” he explained, grinning a little too enthusiastically at me. “She told me I had to come and see the ducks and Mabel’s outfits. She’ll be here in a minute.”
“I can sew, young man,” Mabel said before I could reply. “But we needed a printer for the patterns. Duck dresses aren’t in our books, believe it or not.”
I could believe it.
“And if you two keep grinning at each other like that, people are going to figure out you’re sleeping with each other.”
My stomach dropped.
Josh recovered faster than I did. “What on Earth are you talking about, Mabel? You’re insane.”
“I’m not insane.” She dutifully laid the dress on her lap and folded it carefully. “Your faces lit up when you saw each other in a way they haven’t before.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Then why can’t Miss Talks-A-Lot over there say a word?” She raised one heavily penciled eyebrow at Josh, nodding in my direction. “She’s the first to tell me I’ve lost my mind if my granddaughter isn’t here to do it for me.”
“I have never told you that you’ve lost your mind,” I protested.
“Interesting that that’s the thing you choose to argue,” Josh said dryly.
I glared at him.
“I knew it!” Mabel fist-pumped and pointed at us. “You are doing the dance with no pants.”
“Mabel, you have to be quiet.” I held out my hands and took a step closer to her. “Please. Nobody knows.”
Her eyes widened. “I was right?”
Josh shot me a look as if to say, well done, idiot. “Yes, you were right. We’re figuring things out and nobody knows. You won’t say anything, will you? We don’t want Colton to know until we’re ready.”
“Oooh, this is scandalous.”
“What’s scandalous?” Grandpa Randy said from behind me.
I turned and saw him approach with Josh’s grandma with her arm looped through his.
“Your granddaughter is sleeping with Vicki’s grandson.” Mable’s eyes narrowed when she saw them together. “Why is she with you?”
“Mabel!” Josh and I both said at the same time.
“About time,” Vicki said, releasing Grandpa’s arm and taking Josh’s. Her light-gray hair was pulled up into an elegant chignon, and I admired her ability to do her hair even with her arthritis.
If I tried that now, I’d have birds nesting in it.
“Thank you for the visual,” Grandpa said, coming over and kissing my cheek. “I assume your brother doesn’t know.”
“No. And we’d prefer to stay it that way,” I replied. “Until we’re ready to tell him.”
“He’ll not hear it from me.” He paused and looked at the duck. “The duck looks ridiculous, Mabel. He shouldn’t be wearing a dress.”
“It’s a she!” Mabel argued.
“No, she’s a he,” Grandpa continued. “Trust me. He doesn’t quack as loud as the other girls, and I requested a brown drake.”
“Why would you have a male duck?” Josh asked. “They don’t lay eggs.”
“To get ducklings.” Grandpa grinned brightly.
“Why else would he have a male duck?” I turned to Josh.
“To eat him?”
All three pensioners gasped. “We are not eating our ducks!” Mabel shouted.
She really needed a nap.
“I’d eat them,” Grandpa said, but I couldn’t tell if he was being serious or just stirring the pot. “And take that godawful dress off Benjamin. He looks ridiculous.”
Vicki shook her head and settled onto a bench. “It’s like living in a preschool. Except the preschoolers are all geriatric and need a concoction of drugs three times a day.”
I wasn’t going to argue with that. Old people were an awful lot like toddlers—they required constant supervision, placating with bribes, and tried to run away.
And dress up ducks.
Yep.
Oversized toddlers for sure.
They settled into arguing about the gender of the duck and the functionality of the clothing they’d made for the ducks, and Josh and I took a few steps away from them so we could talk.
“Do you think we need to tell Colton?” he said in a low voice. “You know what Mabel’s like.”
“I don’t think so,” I replied just as quietly. “It’s pretty out there, and both our grandparents will say it’s not true. If she does, I think he’ll just brush it off as Mabel being, well, Mabel.”
Josh grunted. “I have to go back to work tomorrow and I have no idea how I’m supposed to be around him all day long.”
“How do you think I feel? He’s my brother. I can’t lie to him.�
��
“We don’t have to.”
“No, you don’t understand. I can’t lie to him. I’m terrible at it. If he asks me, I’m going to break.”
“I don’t know what you want me to say to you, Kins.” Josh ran his hand through his hair. “This is so fucked up.”
I dragged him a little further away to where we had more privacy. “Well, what do you want me to do? We agreed to keep this secret until we had it all worked out.”
“I know.” He averted his gaze. “Guilt is a shit thing.”
“You started this,” I reminded him. “When I went to leave your house, you’re the one who came after me.”
“Because feeling guilty doesn’t change how I feel about you.” His voice was low, and he met my eyes once again. “It doesn’t mean I regret what we’re doing or wish it would change, all right?”
“Then we tell him,” I said after a moment. “Tonight.”
Josh stared at me for a long moment. “Are you sure?”
“You can’t say all that and ask me if I’m sure. No, I’m not freaking sure, but you clearly need to clear the air for your sanity, so we have to tell him.”
“Fine. Tonight, then.”
I nodded.
Great.
***
Spoiler alert: we did not tell him.
We’d planned it out and everything. I would be the one to break the news, and we’d deal with it from there. Halfway through dinner, I chickened out and told Josh it was up to him.
He hadn’t said it, either.
So all our issues had been for nothing. We were back to square one.
Right now, I was at the bookstore picking out baby shower gifts for Ivy and Kai while Josh was at work with my brother. Saylor had been rearranging the new release table ready for tomorrow’s new release display, and Holley was taking stock in the non-fiction section.
My mind was whirling at one thousand miles an hour. It wasn’t like Josh was the only one keeping a secret from his best friend. Hell, Holley had walked in on us kissing in the storeroom and I hadn’t told her more.
She hadn’t asked, granted, but still. If he were anyone else, she and Say would know everything by now.
I really hated that I didn’t have anyone to talk to about this.
Well, I did, but Ivy had enough on her plate with her due date coming in a month or so. She didn’t need to be babysitting me.
Look, it wasn’t like I thought Holley or Saylor would tell anyone. In fact, I was absolutely certain that they wouldn’t, but that didn’t mean I felt like it was something I could talk about to them.
To say that I was in a relationship for the first time in four years, I was feeling pretty damn lonely.
Because of it.
I guess it was my own fault for getting feelings for someone I shouldn’t have.
I selected the final book I wanted and took them to the register to set them aside. Saylor had eventually decided on buying some baby clothes in the next sizes up, which had meant I could circle back to my original idea of baby books ready for this weekend.
I blew out a long breath and perched on the stool behind the register.
Saylor glanced over at me with a frown. “What’s up?”
“Tired,” I replied, fiddling with the magnet stand to straighten up a few that had been put in the wrong places. “I didn’t sleep well last night.”
She grunted. “I feel that. I was up all night.”
“Why?”
She waved a hand and sat on one of the armchairs by the window, slumping back into it. “I’ve been seeing this guy for a few weeks and ended it last night.”
“Oh. I’m sorry, Say.”
“Don’t be.” Her eyes sparked with anger. “He was a jerk. Turns out he had a girlfriend I didn’t know about until last night when I stumbled on them together at dinner.”
I winced. “Ouch.”
“Not as ouch as it was for him,” she said smugly. “When I say it turns out he had a girlfriend, I mean he had a girlfriend.”
“Oh no. What did you do?”
“Told her he’d been texting me pictures of his dick for the last six weeks and that he was clearly a master cheater, because he’d never once said her name when he slept with me. Then I told him he wasn’t a very good cheater if he couldn’t even make a girl come.”
“Ouch.”
“Not as ouch as when his now ex-girlfriend literally punched him in the face. Turns out she’s a kickboxer and that really hurt.”
“You made friends with her, didn’t you?”
“Yep,” she said brightly. “We mutually disparaged asshole men, said a prayer that his dick would rot, and got drunk.”
“You are the only person I know who could tell a girl you’d slept with her boyfriend and then make friends with her.”
“Hey, I had no idea. He lives in Creek Hill and she lives in Dartree Mountain. It’s not like we were sneaking around. I thought he was being nice by coming here to take me out.” She shrugged. “Technically, I wasn’t doing anything wrong.”
“I never said you were. Just amazed that you could charm her after all that. And that he hid an entire relationship from both of you.”
“Yeah, well, I guess it’s easy when you don’t live in the same town.” She swung her legs up onto the table. “The chances of any of us running into each other while together was slim. It just so happened that I had to go pick up Grandma’s prescription for her last night and she asked me to bring her some sushi from that place over there. If we lived in the same town, it’d be way harder to hide a relationship.”
She was preaching to the choir.
“I guess so.” I trailed off after that and stopped messing with the magnets that I had now apparently rearranged.
Talk about a nervous tic.
“Seriously. What is wrong with you?” Saylor asked after realizing what I’d done.
Thankfully, a huge family of nine people spanning at least three generations entered the store right at that moment, saving me the need to reply.
Thank God.
I was about to spill it.
We both spent the next fifteen minutes helping them find everything they needed—everything from books on the local area to activity books for the four kids with them. When they left, Saylor followed with our lunch orders and headed to Bronco’s to order and pick it up.
Holley was still busy in the non-fic section, but she’d now moved from the cookbooks to the autobiographies. She was wearing her headphones and listening to an audiobook, so I wasn’t even sure she’d realized we’d just sold something like eighteen books to that family.
It would have been more, had the dad not cut off the eleven-year-old girl who wore a t-shirt that proclaimed her a book nerd.
Hmm.
Maybe we needed to stock bookish t-shirts.
I opened my mouth to shout for Holly, but a large gasp followed by a, “No!” sounded from the general direction of where she was, so I decided against it.
If I interrupted her during this book, there was every chance she might kill me.
The store stayed mercifully quiet for a few minutes, and it was only broken by the muffled mumbling of Holley as she expressed her disbelief at the audiobook and, finally, the short, sharp buzz of my cellphone as it indicated a text message.
JOSH: This is hell.
ME: Speak for yourself. Saylor just broke up with some guy who was two-timing her and talking about secret relationships just made me almost spill it.
JOSH: Your brother had a huge fight with Amber this morning. He’s yelling at everyone and just dared someone to give him a reason to punch them.
ME: Why doesn’t he just break up with her?????
ME: AND DON’T DO IT. Remember the right hook.
JOSH: Are you kidding??? I’d rather be hit by a freight train than tell him I’m fucking his sister.
ME: You fucked me once.
JOSH: Thanks to Mother Nature. I’ll be rectifying it the moment you’re done.
&nb
sp; I rolled my eyes.
ME: You could say dating me.
JOSH: Yeah. That’s not how he’s going to see it.
ME: I’m so drained today.
JOSH: I know. We should have told him last night.
ME: Well, we didn’t. Either of us. And we can’t keep showing up at each other’s houses or he’s going to get suspicious.
JOSH: What’s the weather doing tonight?
ME: Do I look like the local news channel?
JOSH: So full of attitude.
ME: It’s one of my better qualities.
JOSH: I just checked. Little chilly, but dry.
ME: What does that have to do with us seeing each other?
JOSH: I have an idea, that’s what.
ME: …I’m going to go gray before you spit it out, aren’t I?
JOSH: Meet me at Peak Point at nine-thirty tonight.
ME: Nine-thirty??? It’ll be cold and dark!
JOSH: So bring a coat and a blanket. Do you want us to see each other or not?
ME: Fine, but you better bring hot chocolate. With marshmallows.
JOSH: You’re so demanding.
ME: If I’m hiking a mile up a trail to see you when I should be in bed eating my weight in cheese puffs, it’s the least you can do.
JOSH: If you eat your weight in cheese puffs, maybe you should be hiking a mile.
ME: Watch it. I know where to hide a body up there.
JOSH: You look so pretty today.
ME: Oh, piss off.
CHAPTER NINETEEN – KINSLEY
rule nineteen: dates aren’t always heels and fancy restaurants.
It was pitch freakin’ black out here.
This was ridiculous. Cheese puffs aside, I really needed to be in bed right now. It was dark and cold and dark. Did I mention it was cold, too?
