Page 41 of The Lovers
“—to a game of flashlight hide-and-seek.”
The table erupts with excitement. Even in a group of successful influencers who are used to pocketing thousands in free merch, a swag bag of goodies is an irresistible get.
Piper rolls her eyes, and I notice the moment Coco sees her do it. Her face turns slightly monstrous as if Coco would, maybe, separate Piper’s head from her body given the chance. It passes quickly, gone in a flash as Millie jumps in to hug her hard around her neck.
Piper isn’t winning friends with this group, and I can’t help how that thought warms my heart, making me want to join them just to see how it might play out.
When I look across the table to where Kit was sitting just moments before, she’s vanished.
“So…we’re supposed to ride back together,” Kit says from behind me. “Or we could stay.”
“Is that a dare?” I fight the quaver in my voice.
“Aren’t we too old for that?” Without turning to look at her, I can infer from her voice that she doesn’t think so.
This is a dare in every way.
A game with countless variables that I can’t control. A sexy prize package. Tasks outside my job requirements, totally out of character. It’s testing my limits. It’s seeing how close we can dance to the past version of us without stumbling back into each other.
This is a chance to cut loose, even if that isn’t what I came here to do.
I shoot up from the table, grabbing the shot glasses Coco left behind and turning around. My eyes lock on Kit’s. “Go ahead.” I push past her toward the bar that’s set up at the edge of this picnic area. “Ask me.”
My skin prickles with electricity as the words come out. This is almost like flirting, something I haven’t done since before Piper and I broke up. Something I shouldn’t be doing with Kit Larson of all people.
“Two tequila shots,” I say; this time there is a definite tremor in my voice. “And lime wedges.” The bartender pours the shots before handing me the lime wedges folded in a napkin. Kit presses up against the bar.
“You want me to actually say the words?” She grabs the tequila shot near her. “I assume this is for me.”
“One of us was always the…darer?” I can’t be sure that’s a word.
Her laugh is swift and breathy. “And one of us was always dragging the other along.”
“I never dragged you.” Not into anything. When Kit made up her mind, nothing could change it; she’d steamroll ahead, consequence be damned.
“Julia.” Hearing her say my name in that breathless, urgent way makes my pulse pound rapidly, sending a bolt of heat through my center. “This whole thing—us, here—it’s a Universe mindfuck.” Her fingers tighten around the shot.
“It’s a coincidence.” I swallow because suddenly my throat has gone dry.
“There’s no such thing,” she almost whispers.
We hold our shots up, ready to clink. In the indigo desert light, her soft green irises are pale and a current of gray skates around the rim like a ring of polar ice. The pupils dilate the longer she looks at me. It could be an intoxicating tell of her attraction or simply a trick of the light. It could mean nothing or everything, but I can’t walk away without finding out.
I cock my brow in question. Back to the subject of this discussion.
She nibbles her lip, and I wonder if they feel as good to kiss now as they did when we were eighteen.
“I triple-dog dare you to play hide-and-seek in the dark,” she says.
I tap her glass with the edge of mine.
Here we go.
Chapter Fifteen
Kit
Natalie and Coco will be the team of seekers, with the rest of us pairing off to hide around the grounds, sharing a single flashlight. We’ll have ten minutes to get into position, at which point someone from the Glamp-Out staff will ring a cowbell warning that the seekers have left homebase—the yurt. Winning is determined by two factors: not getting tagged by either Natalie or Cocoandmaking it back to homebase before any of the other teams.
