CHAPTER 18
This Changes Everything
MITCHELL
MITCHELL: You can read this.
MITCHELL: Why didn’t you block me, Winona?
MITCHELL: I’m not going to stop. Not until you respond to me.
Across the room, Winona’s jaw pulsed.
“What do you think, Mitch?” Blake asked. “You listen to Reese Franco?”
Luckily, I’d heard a few words of the conversation in the pauses between texts. They were talking about Cassandra’s sister-in-law, who’d recently exploded onto the folk-rock charts.
“I have all her albums,” I said. I bought them the minute Blake told me about her. Told everyone I knew. She was good. Sexy voice. A beautiful woman, too. But she didn’t hold a fucking candle to the woman on the chair across from me. The one with the platinum waves curling from her face, which was flushed because she’d beencaught.
She’d read all my texts.All of them.She could have blocked me, but she didn’t. This changed everything. An inferno roared inside me at this newfound knowledge, burning through every promise I’d made to myself about staying away.
Because I strongly suspected Winona didn’t want me to stay away.
“Your brother’s a lucky man,” I said, tipping my beer in Cassandra’s direction.
Winona, sitting next to her, went a little stiff.
Cassandra held up her glass. “Cheers to that. I remind him every chance I get.”
Winona took a swig of wine.
I was a man who’d just discovered he has magic powers. Who’d met his infant child for the first time. I believed in fucking miracles.
Sarah and Cher started talking about Reese’s latest single, and my phone buzzed in my hand.
WINONA: Stop texting me. It’s rude.
MITCHELL: You sent that one, Firecracker. And I will, but I don’t think you want me to.
WINONA: Why on earth would you think that, b’y?
MITCHELL: Because you’re blushing. And it’s fucking beautiful.
Like I’d pressed a button, Winona’s face flooded with even more color. She smiled politely at something Cassandra said, then held her phone under the arm of her chair and typed back.
WINONA: Fuck you, Mitchell.
I read the text. It was close enough to fuck off that I needed to follow through. I pocketed my phone.
Winona’s eyelashes fluttered. She looked up at me, her mouth opening and closing just slightly. She snapped her mouth shut and looked away.
But she didn’t put her phone back in her pocket. I willed her to write back.
Do it, Firecracker. Tell me exactly what you’re thinking.
She ran a finger through her hair in a falsely casual move. Her lip sucked into her teeth.
I was treading on dangerous ground now, watching her. My fingers were this close to grabbing my phone and telling her to meet me back in the kitchen, now. Hell, to saying it out loud.
