HIM: Fine. It’s me.
HER: *** crying laughing emoji *** Why are you reading a romance book?
HIM: I lost a bet about a prank.
HER: Wait. The King of Pranks lost a bet about one.
HIM: Don’t rub my nose in it, my Maisey-girl. It’s already painful enough.
PRESENT DAY
My vision turned spotty, and Irealized I’d forgotten to breathe.
I inhaled slowly, forcing myself to count to four before letting it out. I repeated the action, all while staring at the orange words written on a piece of white construction paper. It looked like the signs the cheerleaders used to make for the high school football team. The ones Chelsea would have spread out around the living room while she and the other cheerleaders laughed and joked and gossiped.
Beckett stopped me just as I reached for the sign. His hands were warm, searing into my wrist, searing into me and reminding me of the heat thathad existed in our life-altering kiss.
He’d bent me over movie-star style and kissed me. Not a gentle peck. Not a mere brush of lips. Instead, it had been the kind of kiss you gave in the dark. Full of longing and lust.
It had felt like returning home and being wrapped in love and acceptance.
It had felt like an inferno of desire had been released, blazing through our veins.
If his crew hadn’t whistled, we might have ended up on the floor in a tangled twine of legs and lips and mouths. Or at least, I’d wanted us to end up there before I’d remembered our audience. Before I’d remembered the kiss was for show.
Beckett had put on a top-notch performance, but I had to remember that was all it was. An act. One I’d been struggling to play along with, just like I was struggling to pull together my emotions as I stared at the note on my car.
I pressed a hand to my stomach, reading the words on repeat.
Fix it before someone gets hurt.
Fix what? And did it mean emotionally hurt? Physically? Was this an actual threat?
“We need to bag it and take it to the sheriff.”
Lost as I was in my own spiral, it took a minute for me to really register what Beckett had said. “What? Why?”
When I looked from the note to him, fury swept over his features. An angry flare I hadn’t witnessed since our teen years.
“What do you mean, why? So we can see if there are fingerprints on it. I want to have a nice long talk with whoever left this and set them straight.” Beckett’s voice was dark and menacing. It sent goosebumps over my skin in all the right and wrong ways.
“It’s just some stupid prank. I’m not wasting the sheriff’s time with something like this,” I said, reaching for the note once more, only to have him jerk me away again. I was up tight against him with my shoulder pressed against his chest and our hips jammed together.
It was too much touching…or maybe not enough.
“We are absolutely giving this to the sheriff,” he insisted.
“This isn’t any different than when the kids used to call me Corny the Deformed Corncob. Or Frankenstein Mouth. The best way to handle it is to ignore it.” I hated that my voice shook a little.
“It’s not the same at all. Whoever this is, threatened you.”
I took a deep breath, glancing back at the sign. It could mean nothing,or it could mean everything. I frowned. The only choices I’d made today had been about moving out of my apartment and in with Beckett while pretending to be his fiancée. I could think of only one person who would despise that choice. Only one person who still felt like she had a claim on Beckett, even though he’d never really belonged to her.
I pulled away from him, ignoring everything he’d said and tearing the sign off the window as he grunted in disapproval.
“I’ll talk to her,” I said.
Inside, I was groaning. I didn’t want to add “confront Delilah Nattingly” to my growing list of tasks.