My lips spread in a slow smile. “No?”
As usual, my big man was quick to make his decision. “Nope.”
And he scooped me up, both hands under my ass. My legs wound around his waist as he straightened, turning us toward our bedroom.
I loved the bed in that cabin. It was my second favorite bed in the world.
“Noah?” I said breathlessly as he sucked along the edge of my throat.
He growled something unintelligible into my skin.
I gripped the sides of his face so I knew he was paying attention to me.
“Wha?” he said. He already had that dazed look in his eye that he got when my clothes started disappearing.
“Make sure to lock the door,” I said. “I don’t want any interruptions for what I’m about to do to you.”
He grinned. His hands tightened on my body as he walked us into the bedroom, his foot delivering a swift kick to the door.
No matter how our love story started, as long as it brought us right here, it was perfect.
Claire
Searching the internet for glimpses of your mother brought about strange emotional reactions. Unless you’d experienced those reactions, it was hard to put them into words. Occasionally, we’d get a postcard from her with an updated address, or a caption-less picture would show up on the usually quiet Facebook account she still had access to. Those tiny snippets were the only way my sisters and I knew where Brooke was currently spending her days.
My heart and my head warred mightily when I studied the last few pictures she’d posted. I wasn’t furious at the thought of her; it was hard to be when we had such a happy life in her absence. But I didn’t feel nothing either. Sometimes I wanted to punch her. Sometimes I wanted to hug her. Most of all, I wanted to sit across from Brooke Ashley Huntington-Ward and pick apart her brain. That was the most desperate feeling of all of them, fighting for first place in my head. I wanted to understand why, and it drove me abso-friggin-lutely batshit crazy that I might never have that understanding.
As I scrolled through, counting five pictures posted in the last three years, my twin sister’s phone lit up on the desk next to me where it was charging. My eyes cut to the screen, a force of habit because it was often a group text from one of our other sisters or Paige.
It wasn’t from any of them, though. What appeared was a text from Finn, my twin sister Lia’s best friend, and like I’d trained my body to do it, my heart sped up at the sight of his stupid name.
Finn: Lia, PLEASE, I’ll owe you a million favors if you help me out.
“I’ll help you,” I mumbled miserably. It didn’t even matter what he needed help with. I’d do it. I’d do it without a million favors. If I closed my eyes, I could picture every detail of his face. The way his smile was a little lopsided. The width of his shoulders that seemed to expand every year. The shy exterior that hid a personality that was so, so funny and dry and sarcastic. But I didn’t close my eyes because picturing my twin sister’s best friend was another thing that made my head and heart war mightily. And every single time, my head won.
Leave him alone.
It would be too weird.
He doesn’t even look at you that way.
Those were all the things I told myself when my crush on Finn flared out of control. And it had helped for years.
“Text from Finn,” I yelled.
“What does he want?” Lia called from our kitchen, right around the corner from my bedroom.
I swallowed heavily as I read the text again. “Help. He’ll owe you a million favors.”
Lia groaned. “He could offer two million, and I still wouldn’t be able to do it.”
“What does he need your help with?”
“Some fancy-pants dinner and award ceremony. He needs a plus one, and since he refuses to find himself a date, his mom practically demanded that I go with. I think she actually put my name on the guest list because she assumed I wouldn’t say no.”
My heart clenched with unwelcome jealousy. “It’s just dinner. Why not go?”
“I can’t. I have something that night, and moving it isn’t an option. He just thinks I’m being stubborn.”
I rolled my eyes. Lia was physically incapable of admitting when she was being stubborn, which was about ninety-two percent of her existence.
The sound of her footsteps approached my doorway, quick and loud. “Wait,” she said.
I spun my chair to face her. “What?”
A devious smile spread over her face.
“No,” I said instantly.?Twin telepathy, y’all. It was a real thing.
“Oh, yes.” She rubbed her hands together. “We haven’t done a twin swap in years, Claire. Come on, won’t it be fun?”
While my head tried desperately to wrap around the idea of pretending to be my sister for the first time since high school, it was a faint whisper compared to what my heart was doing.
That particular organ buried in my chest was roaring and thrashing, screaming at me to do this one thing
that would grant me my greatest unfulfilled wish.
Time with Finn.
“He’ll know,” I argued weakly.
Lia blew a raspberry through her lips. “Nah, he won’t. You know how to be me, Claire. It’s one dinner. Then I’m off the hook, and his mom gets off his back.”
One dinner with Finn. One night to soak up his attention instead of playing the third wheel to the clearly non-romantic friendship between him and my sister. They’d never even hinted that they wanted to cross that line, which was the only reason I was even considering this insanity. Because for one night, I wanted to know what it felt like to have his eyes on me. To wear a pretty dress and spend the evening by his side.
“One dinner,” I said again.
She bounced excitedly in the doorway. “You’ll do it? Seriously?”
I took a deep breath and held it, muting every argument that sprang into my head. “I’ll do it.”
Claire’s night didn’t turn out exactly as she planned. It would’ve been just fine … if Finn had been the one to show up. Keep reading after the Focused bonus epilogue to find out what happens when Finn’s bad boy brother shows up instead…
Focused Bonus Epilogue
FOCUSED BONUS EPILOGUE
A few years after
The End
Molly
“I hate my job.” My voice was muffled by the pillow I’d just screamed into, but my husband got the drift on the other end of the phone.
“No you don’t.”
I whipped the pillow off and turned onto my side, tucking my hands underneath it while I stared at the phone screen. He was smiling, that little amused tilt of his lips that didn’t come out very often. There was no screaming in pillows for Noah Griffin, even though he was just as affected by this as I was.
New Book: Back Home to Marry Off Myself
Loredana’s father left the family for his mistress, leaving them to fend for themselves abroad. When life was at its toughest, her father showed up with “good news” after 8 years of absence: To marry off Loredana to a paralyzed son of the wealthy Mendelsohn family.