Forbidden Kisses (3:AM Kisses Book 9) (3 page)

“He’s not coming,” Scarlett says it just above a whisper.

“Are you talking about C—?”

Scarlett darts a harsh glance my way and shakes her head ever so slightly.

“What’s this here?” Sabrina cocks her head to the side while the pasty-faced dude keeps his eyes glued to Scarlett. He hasn’t once looked away, and something about that wet dream look on his face makes me want to sock him. “Oh, hon”—she flicks her wrist—“there ain’t no shame in being single.” Sabrina’s country twang is much thicker than Scarlett’s. At first, I couldn’t tell if I was hallucinating, but the more I listened, the more it was there in the background like a ghost trying not to be seen. “Just because Duncky and I have found true love doesn’t mean you need to run off and get yourself saddled with just any ol’ body.”

Duncky’s eyes drop to Scarlett’s cleavage, and I hold out my hand, cock-blocking his view. “Rex Toberman.” If the girls aren’t going to do the honors, I’ll take the reins.

“Duncan Wormier.” A look of discontent takes over his features. “I used to date Scarlett.”

Shit. I stop mid-shake.

Sabrina swats him in the stomach, and now this entire wishing-Colin-were-here-scenario makes perfect sense. Sabrina is a boyfriend-jacker, and she’s hauled him to the Squirrely Whirly Retreat to rub him in poor Scarlett’s face.

“So, it’s Duncky, huh?” I nod at the dude trying to get out of the awkwardness his confession has landed us in.

Scarlett takes in a breath. “Something stupid I used to call him.”

“Yes, well, he’s mine now.” Sabrina pulls Scarlett in and giggles as if this were somehow appropriate. “We thought we’d meet the young man Scar Scar has been hiding, but I suppose he’ll remain a mystery—perhaps an illusion for quite some time now!” She cackles again right into her sister’s face, and I can see Scarlett’s cheeks heating to match the color of her hair.

“Maybe he won’t be such a mystery.” I shrug, and Scarlett glares back at me for even bothering to intervene. I look right at her, and something in those glassy jade eyes softens just a bit. As if I tossed out a life preserver to that sinking ship she’s on, and she’s actually made the decision to reach for it. “Maybe you’re looking at him.”

All three pairs of eyes widen at the same time, Scarlett’s being the most prominent and damning with rage.

“Come on, Scar Scar.” I tick my head at her. “Let’s let the relationship cat out of the bag. You’re not ashamed of me, are you?”

Her mouth opens, and an entire series of choking sounds come out—one of my favorite things to induce in a girl, usually in bed and never in front of her sister.

“See?” I step in close and wrap an arm over her shoulders. “That wasn’t so bad.”

“Wait a Whitney Briggs’s minute!” Sabrina sings, pointing wildly at the two of us as if she were a conductor. “Does Daddy know about this little indecent arrangement?”

“No way, no how,” Scarlett grunts it out. Her chest rises and falls as she glares at me a moment. “We’re sort of a new thing—a secret at the moment. We’re only telling the two of you, so if word gets out, we’ll know who to kill.” She gifts them a look that can just as easily slit their throat. There’s the girl I know, right back to her snippy, hostile self. For as much as I can’t stand to be around her, I don’t want to see her beating heart ripped out of her chest by her sister of all people.

“Oh, honey”—Sabrina skirts her gaze up and down my body twelve times fast as if she might be in the mood to swipe another guy out from under Scarlett’s nose—“our lips are very much sealed.”

Mom shuttles us over to the living room, giggling like a schoolgirl herself. Just watching her like this, happy to be here, turns my stomach. “How about we watch a movie like one big happy family?” She dots Bradley’s face with a kiss, and a dull collective groan runs through the room. I don’t think a single one of us can ever get used to seeing their geriatric love connection in action.

Knox and Lawson help narrow down our viewing picks, and while everyone vies for their favorite flick, I pull Mom aside to the hall.

“What’s with the June Cleaver routine?” I glance down at her flour-stained apron. This reeks Halloween costume more than it ever does happy homemaker, especially with my mother dressed the part.

“Would you relax?” She strokes my hair for a moment as if I were five. “Can you just once be happy for me?” Her features relax, beckoning me to do the same. My mother has been through a hell of a lot, I’ll give her that, but something about the way this weekend, this relationship of hers with Brad-the-Fad is unfolding has me feeling a little sorry for the guy. “You know I’ve been through a lot. I deserve this”—she scowls at her choice of clothing—“this Happy Suzy Homemaker delusion.”

“Delusion being the operative word.” The lights dim as Bradley calls us each to take a seat. He pats the space next to him for his
Lyn Lyn
. God help me or I might actually land my fist through that old coot’s jaw.

“Enough for now,” she whispers as we head on over. “Just forget about the past, Rex. God knows I have.” She struts off and lands next to Scarlett’s father as if he had been holding that seat for her for the last twenty years.

But those last few words of hers sting the most. It’s true. My mother has set the past very far behind her.

* * *

A
fter a droning action
comedy that most of us have seen one too many times before, my mother doles out room assignments. Knox and Trixy bunk together. They’re twins, two years my junior, and they’ve spent their whole lives bunking together. Even at their age, they don’t seem to mind. Scarlett and her sister are in the room next to mine, and I’m the lucky fuck who gets to bunk with “Duncky.”

The second the door shuts to our room, he starts stripping down to his boxers, and I toss a spare pillow at him.

“Put the pants back on, dude, before I shank you.” I land on the tiny bed in the corner, and the mattress doesn’t bother to give. Great. Just what the team doctor ordered for my aching back, a slab of concrete to call my own.

“You what?” He winces with his thumbs hitched in his boxers as if they’re the next thing to go. “It’s hot. I’m taking it all off and getting under the covers. I suggest you close your eyes if it offends you.”

“Offends me? It’s going to give me nightmares for the rest of my fucking life.”

He freezes midway, and his blinding white moon forces me to turn away. “You kiss her mouth with those lips?”

“Kiss her mouth?” For a second, I’m disoriented, but before I can put the Scarlett pieces together, the door cracks open and Sabrina lands beside me on the twin-sized bed.

“Go on.” She smacks me over the leg until I’m standing. “Scar Scar’s waiting for you! We’re doing the old switcheroo,” she whispers, holding her finger to her lips for full effect.

Crap. I take off and enter the room to my left with a light foot in the event Scar Scar frightens easily and I find a knife planted in my neck, and with the way she feels about me, I might anyway.

Instead, I find Scarlett sitting in the middle of a double bed with nary a second mattress around.

“Where am I supposed to sleep?” I glance over to a round contraption that might work as a chair, but there’s no way my body could hope to balance on it—in a fetal position no less. That, right there, is the nightmare that benchwarmers are made of.

“You’re sleeping with me,
sweetheart
,” she drags it out slow—no sugar, just the way I did earlier, and I can’t help but smile.

“Is this the part where you tell me I brought this upon myself?”

“This is the part where I tell you a night on the walnut hardwood will really straighten you out.”

Shit. I glance to the floor and shake my head. “No way, Lady Godiva. I’m taking my pillow and hitting the couch downstairs. My back needs to be in top condition for next season. I’ve got practice all summer, and it’s going to end real quick the second I fall asleep on that petrified forest.”

No sooner does my hand hit the doorknob than a pillow lobs me from behind.

“You can’t leave!” she hisses in a panic. “She’ll know we’re just a lie!” I turn around to catch the whites of her eyes as they glint in the dimly lit room, and she squeezes them shut for a moment. “Please stay. I can sleep on the floor.” She tosses her pillow down with the enthusiasm reserved for the guillotine, and my stomach turns.

“Don’t move.” I head over and lie as close to the edge of the bed as possible.

“Are you sure?” Her voice fills the air like a nervous hummingbird.

“Are
you
sure?”

“I’m sure.” She crawls under the sheets and flops the comforter over me. “Thank you for staying—and for doing that thing you did. That was pretty nice.”

The air grows stale in the room for a moment as I wait for the dig, but it never comes.

“You’re welcome. I’m sure you would have done the same for me.”

“Not on your life, Sexy Rexy.” She kicks me from under the sheets, and my chest thumps with a laugh.

“At least you say it like you mean it.”

“Right. Keep dreaming and scheming to make me yours. It’s not happening. I’m a free agent, and that’s exactly the way I’m going to stay.”

“Suit yourself. It’s you who’s missing out in the end.” The sound of our breathing clogs up the silence, quickly replaced by the sound of a squeaky mattress from the other side of the wall. Thank God our parents are safely tucked downstairs, because so help me God, if I heard even the slightest rattle… I shake the thought out of my head. “Can I ask what happened?”

“What do you mean ‘what happened’? You were there. You
made
it happen. You scared off my plan A. Colin made good on his last name and baled.”

“Not that.” I roll over onto my back, staring blankly at the ceiling. An anemic stream of moonlight curves its way in through the curtains, adding just the right amount of midnight blue to make this feel even more like a mind fuck. “What happened with you and that nudist next door? Why is he dunking his toothpick into your sister when he could have had you?”

A hard swat comes over my chest. “First of all,
eww
. And second of all, double
eww
. I don’t care about Duncan. I don’t care if he runs around naked all weekend or how hard he and my sister are jumping on that bed. So help me God, you try to tell me different and I might vomit.”

A dull laugh strums through me, and the mattress gives a soft bounce. “Okay, if you say so, they’re jumping on the bed. You wouldn’t happen to feel like making some mattress music yourself, would you?”

Another swat comes at me, this time striking a little too close to the face.

“I’ll take that as a no. And watch the moneymaker, would you?”

“Moneymaker,” she scoffs. “Let me guess who your biggest customers would be. The entire WB cheer squad?”

“The cheer squad and I get along. You got a problem with that?”

“Only if the fact that you get along with the cheer squad introduces bed bugs of the sexual variety to my childhood quilt.”

The room quiets down before the squeaky mattress next door starts up again.

“And round two is a go.” I wait for the assault to hit its crescendo, but Scarlett simply groans and pulls the pillow over her head.

I think back on all my girlfriends, the ones I was at least semi-serious with and think about how much it would suck, how much it would piss me off if Knox was next door making some mattress moves on my ex. My blood boils just thinking about it.

“Come on.” I give her a light tap on the knee and start bouncing up and down on the mattress by simply gyrating my body. A loud, dying shriek of a squeak ricochets throughout the room, and Scarlett lets out a gasp.

“They’re going to think we’re—” She freezes for a moment then pulls me abruptly up by the hand, and, before we know it, we’re jumping on the bed, aiming high for the vaulted ceiling, laughing our asses off. It takes less than thirty seconds for a series of solid thumps to come from the adjoining wall.

“Keep it down in there, would you?” a distinctly male voice roars from the other side.

“Sounds like Duncky doesn’t like to share his Scar Scar,” I muse.

Scarlett plunges her head back and lets out a wicked laugh as if it were the funniest thing in the world. She pulls us down to our knees, and it’s only then I note our hands are still conjoined, her warm fingers interlacing with mine. She jerks away as if pulling her hand out of a fire.

“Sorry about that.” She falls back onto her elbows, and I follow, the bed still rippling from our efforts.

“Not a problem.” It felt kind of nice, innocent, holding her hand, but I’ll be the last to mention it. “You hear that?” I hold up a finger to the silver light.

“I don’t hear anything.”

“Exactly.” I hold out my hand, and she slaps me five. “We’ve effectively duncked the Dunker.”

Scarlett gives a bubbling laugh at the thought. “Serves them right.”

“Serves them right indeed.”

“Why do you care if they’re having a good time?” She calls me out on the questionable camaraderie.

“Because I don’t like seeing annoying people that happy.” Sort of true. “Besides, I’m not sure if I believe in happiness anymore.” True as God.