Page 53 of Love, Morgan

I froze. “Are you… going to murder the person who sent it?”

She smirked over her shoulder at me. “Maybe. Would you like it if I did?”

“What? No. You can’t. You’d get in so much trouble.”

She laughed. “Relax. I’m not going to murder anyone. Today.” She winked and I almost died. “The only life hanging in the balance is mine from not knowing who is out here impersonating you.”

I watched her, my brow creased. “Okay…”

She poured a drink and led me out onto the balcony, sitting us at the table out there. “Here. Drink. Quickly. And tell me. I will, quite literally, die if you don’t tell me soon.”

I sipped the drink, realizing it was the same thing she’d helped herself to in my bungalow. Despite the ongoing threat of death, the fact that she’d remembered touched me.

When I set it down on the table between us, fairly sure she’d intended it as a shared drink, she was practically bouncing in her seat.

“It was Thalia,” I said, my heart pounding as ifIwas admitting murder, though I was fairly certain that was just a remnant from her pinning me to the wall.

She sucked in a breath, paused when the news fully registered, and deflated again. “Oh.” Her face scrunched up adorably as she thought it through. “Thalia? From the front desk? The one stealing your pineapple?”

“The very same.” I grimaced.

“She steals pineapple fromyou, and sendsmemango? And pretends it’s from you?Why?”

And that was the part I didn’t want to discuss. Especially not after she’d just pinned me to a wall.

I cleared my throat, took another sip of the drink, cleared my throat again, and looked everywhere except at Morgan for so long I could sense her becoming agitated.

“Iona?” she eventually asked, rearranging herself in her seat again. “I’m trying my very best to be patient here, but I am absolutelydyingto know…”

“Mm-hm.” I chewed my lip, nodding.

Why hadn’t it occurred to me on the walk back over here that Morgan would ask this and I’d need to have a better answer than the fact that Thalia was convinced I was in love with Morgan?

“Please, I’m begging you,” she said, leaning towards me. “Tell me what’s going on inside your head.”

I winced. My dad had told me a million times that I was too stuck in my own head, that I had so much going on in there that I never let people see, and that I should let them in. I hadn’t meant to do that to Morgan. I didn’t want her to be frustrated with me. I just didn’t know how to say—

“She thinks I have a crush on you.” The words left my mouth independently of my brain. If any part of me had engaged long enough to think the statement through, it would never have been uttered. But, apparently, the world and Thalia were conspiring against me, and my mouth was just going along for the ride, saying what it wanted, throwing me to the wolves, and the consequences be damned.

Morgan jumped back slightly, sitting taller in her seat, one of her legs pulled up under her now. Eventually, a wide smile overtook her face. “Well, I am gorgeous.”

“Ah-huh,” I squeaked, unsure whether it sounded non-committal when it came out at that octave.

She watched me, clearly thinking hard for several long seconds, and my heart beat so fast and so hard, I was certain it was going to stop, run out of beats, and be done with life.

“And do you?” she asked eventually, genuinely curious.

“Do I think I have a crush on you?”

She laughed. “If you want to beat around the bush with it, sure.”

I could feel my heart beating in my throat, and, alongside it, the near-certain knowledge that I was going to throw up.

What had I been thinking telling her the truth? What had I been thinking by not coming up with an excuse on the way over here? What had I been thinking with having a crush on Morgan and starting this whole thing in the first place?

I gulped, but the ball of stress and fear and whatever else was now living in my throat wouldn’t budge. “I think you’re great.”

She grinned wider. “That doesn’t quite answer the question, you know?”

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