Page 53 of Kiss the Girl
“I believe it. Looking forward to seeing where she got it from.”
He was good at rolling with the punches. I’d give him that.
“I’ll leave you to clean up,” my mom said, turning back toward the house. “I need to start planning my menu.”
When the door closed behind her, Noah cocked his head at me. “She knows it’s still almost a month until Thanksgiving, right?”
“Sorry I dragged you into that, but you can see how much it cheered her up.”
“Fair is fair,” he said. “But is she going to be bummed when we fake break up?”
“I’ll tell her this is fake,” I said. “It’ll stress her out if she thinks it isn’t. She’ll worry about me staying in Creekville. Then she can enjoy Thanksgiving without brooding about that and have fun entertaining guests. She’ll be in her element.”
He nodded as he closed the clasp on the toolbox and hefted it up. I liked that he made it look easy. That toolbox was no joke.
But also, my dumb monkey brain did not need to be preoccupied with his biceps.
“Thanks for putting on a show for the team,” he said. “For being basically honest people, are we way too good at this fake dating thing?”
“Speak for yourself. I was sweating bullets.”
“You don’t look sweaty.” He ran his eyes over me, and it was enough to make the nape of my neck sweat for real.
“I’m sweaty inside where my conscience is.” I headed for the garage. “This is a very dumb thing we’re doing. You know that, right? Will it mess up your story with Dr. Boone when I leave?”
Noah shook his head. “I won’t bring you up, and if she does, I’ll explain that you moved to wherever you move to, but the fact that I’m still here proves I’m the kind of guy who sticks around. It’ll work. Probably?” He watched Evie for a moment. “It has to.”
I reached out and wrapped my hand around his wrist, a way to say, “I got you.” “We’ll make it work,” I promised. “Just eight more weeks.”
Chapter Sixteen
Noah
“Have y’all lost your minds?” Brooke asked when we settled in for game night the following Thursday.
“I thought you’d be happy about this,” Grace said. “You’ve been trying to hook us up for months.”
“Hook you up forreal,” Brooke said. “Not cast you in some Hallmark Christmas comedy.”
“Dr. Boone isn’t taking me seriously for the head coach job,” I said. “She says changing districts once already is a red flag and being single is another one because I’m likely to up and move to wherever my future wife wants to live.”
“She can’t use that to keep from hiring you.”
“Not officially, but you know how she can drop a strong hint.”
Brooke sighed. “I do.” She darted a glance between Grace and me. “I want to go on record as saying you two are idiots.”
“But you’ll play along when you have to?”
She rolled her eyes. “Yes. I’ll pretend I’m learning to do deep cover ops like Ian is. Have I told you guys that—”
“—he’s coming for Thanksgiving,” Grace and I said at the exact same time and busted up laughing.
“It’s come up,” Grace said.
Brooke flipped us both off. “You two deserve each other.”
Grace pretended to be shocked. “Why, Mrs. Greene, I do believe you’ll need to serve a detention for that.”
