Don’t do it, I remind myself.Don’t think of this as anything more than a one-night thing.
“Diego went nuts before the game yesterday over the pictures of you at puppy prom.”
I cringe in the dark. No one told me that Phillip Nash would show up, and now everyone thinks I’m dating the rock star, which Cooper undoubtedly saw if he saw the stories about puppy prom. “Puppies never take bad pictures.”
“Was that your first prom?”
My brain screeches to a halt at the hint lingering in his voice.
No.
No.
I swallow hard. “I guess, kind of.”
“Kind of?”
“When you have your first meeting with record execs at thirteen, traditional high school kinda goes out the window. I never had an actual prom, and that’s okay. I had something else.” We’re still in the entryway to his house in the Blue Ridge Mountains not far outside of the city, just standing here, holding hands in the dark and talking about puppies and prom and high school while I squash the panic attack that’s suddenly building at the suspicion of what might be waiting for me in the dark.
He didn’t.
Tell me he didn’t do what I’m afraid he did after he brought up puppy prom with that subtle suggestion in his voice, when Cooper isknownfor things.
I should kiss him. Right here in the dark. And then I don’t have to find out.
But what if I leap on him and accidentally hurt his ass?
It has to be bruised. Ithasto be.
He’s quiet again, and that’s unsettling. Cooper’s never quiet.
I squeeze his hand. “Let’s go upstairs.”
“Waverly, I—”
He cuts himself off like he’s nervous.
Maybe he hurt his butt and he can’t operate his equipment right now. He’s injured and needs to heal. Thrusting won’t work, and if I remember anything from eight years ago, it’s that he gives very good thrust.
“I think I fucked up again,” he says, his words rushed and so unexpected that they barely register. He shifts, something clicks, and then fairy lights glow to life all around us.
They’re woven in the banister on the stairs in front of us. Draped across the walls in the living room off to our left, around the fireplace, over the front of a table overflowing with plates of crackers and dried fruits and bowls of chocolates, and into the open kitchen at the back of the massive room. Balloon bunches are tied up and hovering in clumps around the room, and streamers in pink and ivory are draped from the corners, twisting up to a twirling disco ball in the center of the room.
There’s a massive bowl of punch on the island in his kitchen, right between a small tower of champagne glasses and an ice sculpture of two swans whose necks make the shape of a heart.
Soft music flows out of built-in speakers.
Ed Sheeran. He’s playing Ed Sheeran’s “Perfect.”
My stomach turns. My heart thuds to the floor.
He did.
He absolutelydiddo the last thing I expected him to do.
And I do what I’ve been trained to do, and I turn a brilliant smile on him. “Oh my gosh. You did all this for me?”
He’s watching me like he knows I’m faking it, and his ears are going pink. “My mom says I have too much energy and too many ideas. Sometimes, I try to use my powers for good.”
