“Honestly?” Boone says, his hands tightening on my waist. “I have no idea. But I know I don’t want to pretend I don’t feel.”
“Feel what?”
“This pull. This need to be near you, to touch you, to—” He cuts himself off, but his hands speak for him, sliding up my sides.
“It’s impossible,” I say again, but the word has lost all conviction.
“Yeah,” Wyatt says. “But maybe impossible is just another word for difficult.”
“We could figure it out,” Jesse suggests, his lips brushing my ear.
“Figure what out?”
“How to do this without the world ending.”
“There’s no way to do this. Our families would disown us. The whole town would go insane. Mrs. Delaney would probably have a heart attack from the excitement.”
“So we keep it quiet,” Boone suggests, his thumbs stroking my ribs.
“A secret?”
“Our secret,” Wyatt confirms, his hand sliding down my neck.
“You really think we could keep this, whatever this is, secret?”
“We can try,” Jesse says, and then his mouth is on my neck, kissing the spot Wyatt marked earlier, and all rational thought flies out the barn door.
Jesse’s mouthis still on my neck when we hear it—a loud, indignant bleating from outside.
Rita.
We freeze.
“What was that?” Jesse asks against my skin, his lips still pressed to my pulse point.
“Rita,” I say, my voice shaky. “She must have gotten out of her pen.”
Another bleat, closer this time, more insistent. Then the sound of something heavy hitting the barn door.
“Is she trying to get in?” Boone asks, his hands still on my waist.
THUNK. THUNK. THUNK.
“She’s headbutting the door,” I realize, trying to clear the fog from my brain. “She does that when she’s upset about something.”
“What’s she upset about?” Wyatt asks.
“Probably the fact that I’m not in the house where she expects me to be. She knows my routine, and she definitely knows we’re in here.”
“Your goat knows your routine?” Jesse pulls back slightly, looking amused despite the interruption.
“Yes. She tends to be rigid.”
THUNK. THUNK. THUNK.
The sound is loud enough to wake the dead, let alone my father who’s just inside the house.
“We need to get her to stop,” I say, pulling away from their touches.
