“This is real. Right here,” she picks up his hand and kisses it, “right now.”
“I want you to kiss me, Skyla.”
She leans in and lands a peck on his lips. Her biggest fear is that she’ll end up in a marathon make-out session with each one of them tonight. Logan, Gage, and Marshall.
“Kiss me like you mean it.” Logan’s longitudinal dimple inverts. It’s the earmark of all of the suffering they’ve been through, the aching lust that had to be denied, the deception, the outright public denial they exhibited just so they could survive. Logan and I were rising like a kite, the long tail of the past glittering behind us like an indelible trail of where we once were and how we came to survive.
“I’ll kiss you like I mean it.” She crashes her lips over his, and every blissful emotion detonates. The stars, the sun, and moon, they outshine their glory—the banner over the two of them is eternal love. They have happily ever after in their grasp, they just need to reach out and clasp onto it?—
He pulls back abruptly. “I’d better go.” He dots her forehead with a kiss. “Thank you for that. I know you don’t want to have a ‘marathon make-out session’ with each one of us tonight.” He gives a playful wink. “And if you do”—he holds up his hands like it’s a stickup— “turnabout’s fair play.”
“Logan.” She swats him on the stomach.
“I’m going to ditch out the back gate. Why don’t you head inside and find that morose nephew of mine. Tell him to stop moping around like he’s got a communicable disease.”
“Got it.” She pinches his hand as their fingers lose their grasp and watches as he melts into the dismal fog. “I’ll always be your zombie girlfriend!” she shouts after him.
“And I’ll,” he holds out his hands, considering it for a moment, “always be your dead boyfriend.”
A bubbling laugh rides through her as she heads inside to find Gage.
Marathon kissing session. She huffs a laugh at the idea.
Although she did kiss Marshall earlier, and God knows, she just kissed Logan.
Two down—one to go.
“Now that was hot,” I say to Logan—this older, hotter version—wrapping my arms around him with a laugh. “And we were inl-o-v-e.”
“No, no, heavens no,” Candace protests suddenly, her voice sharp with what sounds suspiciously like panic. “This night won’t do. It’s too—too close to the war. We need to step back just a bit.” She waves her hands as if trying to erase the scene before us. “Here, why don’t I find something that I’m sure you’ll both approve of?”
Logan furrows his brows as he checks his watch, a gesture I know is more out of habit, considering time is something thatdoesn’t quite matter when we’re light driving. “Look, it’s getting late.”
“Oh, dear, sweet Logan,” my mother’s voice drips with danger, “is it past your bedtime?” she teases, landing a kiss to his cheek that feels more calculated than affectionate.
And just like that, my internal alarm bells ring louder with each passing moment. Why is she so insistent that we move away from this period of time? What doesn’t she want us to see—or worse, what doesn’t she want us to remember about this haunted, happy night? More importantly, why the hell is she kissing Logan?
“By all means,” Candace says as she puts her hands on our shoulders, her fingers gripping just a bit too tightly as if she were afraid that we might escape. “Let’s find somewhere more suitable.”
Once again, the ground bounces below our feet, and we’re wrapped in a cloud of stars, being pulled through the fabric of Paragon’s past like threads through some cosmic needle.
The last thing I see before Demetri’s Halloween party dissolves completely is my mother’s face—not triumphant as she was before, but tense with something that looks a lot like fear.
Whatever game she’s playing, the rules are changing. And I have a sinking feeling we’re not the players we thought we were—we’re the pieces being sacrificed.
6
Skyla
The past dissolves into a swirl of blue sparkles before dumping us into another episode ofSkyla’s Greatest Mistakes. Not that the last place we were in was a blatant mistake, but it sure as heck led to a few whoppers.
The lights are dim, and teenage bodies are littered everywhere, all hunting for their next regrettable hookup like it’s a competitive sport.
Emily Morgan’s cavernous living room pulses with piano music—something dark and moody that perfectly matches the house’s haunted aesthetic. The air is thick with the competing scents of contraband beer and pricey perfume, both trying to mask the homegrown weed, and the unmistakable aroma of bad decisions waiting to happen.
We’ve rewound time so far back from that fated Halloween party that we may as well have gone back to the Garden of Eden.
“Eleventh grade,” Logan whispers beside me as he nods with recognition. “Chloe’s welcome home party at Emily’s house.”
