‘Pucker up, you two.’
‘Don’t let that mistletoe go to waste.’
Something that felt a lot like a lump of cold cement sank to the pit of Fin’s stomach. He glanced up—so did Sweeney. That fucking plastic mistletoe had been hanging there for longer than Fin had been alive. Because his dad had been a romantic who believed public displays of affection shouldn’t be limited to Christmas and had never tired of kissing his mother under it, much to the delight of his patrons.
Well,shit…
He dragged his eyes off the offending piece of kitsch, his gaze landing on Marjorie Weaver, who was as imposing as ever and who could Lady Whistledown any piece of news into gossip. She was the only one in a crowd of beaming faces who wasn’t smiling—at least, not all the way to her eyes, anyway. Eyes that were narrowed. Speculative. As though she could see the panic in his eyes and wasn’t buying this sudden engagement one little bit.
Double shit.
Because he knew that the ultimate in public humiliation for their mothers lay in the town’s busiest body calling them out. Resigned, Fin turned slightly towards Sweeney, glancing down at their joined hands before meeting her gaze.
‘I don’t know about you,’ she said, her voice only just audible to him over the general hubbub as she turned towards him, ‘but I’m going to kill my mother for this later.’
Fin laughed. It felt good to laugh in this completely absurd situation. ‘Do you remember that time when we were twelve and we played spin the bottle at my cousin Donny’s party and we had to kiss?’
His smile was tight and his voice low. Or at least he hoped it was. Between the clapping and calls from the partygoers and thewhooshof his pulse in his ears, he couldn’t hear much.
‘Of course.’
‘That wasn’t terrible, was it?’ Sure, they’d bumped noses and clashed teeth, but it hadn’t been terrible. Although ithadbeen weird. Not least because, for a while there, he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it. But not terrible.
She blinked. ‘We’re nottwelveanymore.’
If that wasn’t the understatement of the night, Fin didn’t know what was. Sweeney certainlywasn’ttwelve anymore. She wasallgrown up. The dress she was wearing did a fine job of showcasing that. The trip in his pulse, however, felt the same as it had at Donny’s as his twelve-year-old self had contemplated kissing the girl he’d known forever.
Sweeney sighed. ‘Just do it already.’
Which is exactly what she’d said back then, as resigned to the dictates of an empty coke bottle as she was by their mothers’ big fat birthday lie.
Conscious of the crowd baying for action, Fin took a steadying breath and slid his hands up Sweeney’s arms, aware of her in a way he’d never been before. He was surprised to feel goosebumps stippling her skin and wondered absently if she was cold.
Fin’s game plan—as much as he had one—was a brief, perfunctory peck. Give the crowd what they came for then back the hell away. But that all went to shit the second their lips met.
Something… shifted.
A flare of heat bloomed and, after a beat, she leaned in a little, her body hot against his as the racket from their very appreciative audience faded to black. It was just Sweeney and her mouth and that tiny, unexpected noise at the back of her throat that slid hot fingers into his jeans.
He didn’t know how many seconds had elapsed when he pulled away. He doubted it was many. But it’d been longer than he’d planned. And his breathing was a little too uneven for something that had been essentially nothing more than a press of lips.
It took a beat to process everything amidst the noise of wolf-whistles so he said the first thing that came into his head. ‘You want a drink?’
God knew he did.
Sweeney blinked a couple of times. ‘The biggest one they have.’
Three
Sweeney was used to waking in unfamiliar places. She’d woken in anything from posh five-star suites with mattresses that felt as if they’d been made out of feathers plucked from angel’s wings to a swag in the Australian outback. She’d woken on boats and planes and buses. In a glass-ceilinged igloo, a bungalow over water and a yurt. Hell, a few months ago she’d woken in a hobbit hole.
But she’dnever everwoken in Fin’s bedroom.
Sure, she’d beeninhis bedroom—a lot. As kids, playing their Gameboys, watchingRageon Saturday mornings and obsessing over their Tamagotchis. Sometimes just them, sometimes with an assortment of Fin’s cousins. As teens, working on assignments together or swotting for exams or angsting over bad hair (him), thick thighs (her) and whoever was the current crush in their lives.
Living three doors down on the opposite side of the street, walking into each other’s homes had been as natural as breathing.Sittingon his bed had been done without thinking twice. Just flopping down on it as her teeth sank into the apple she’d always grabbed from the ever-present bowl on the dining room table she had to pass by on the way to his room.
Waking up in it? Yeah, that was a first.
