Something flashes in his gaze. Something that looks a lot like relief. “Is that so?”
“Tell me about what you remember about kissing me,” I say. There had been a group of us hanging out down in the dungeons of the castle and someone suggested we play Spin the Bottle.
I think it had been me, which is probably the only reason my brothers agreed.
That had been the age I perfected the temper when I didn’t get what I wanted.
“It was my first kiss,” Spencer says in a low voice. “Because I was not a princess who people like to kiss. I was thirteen, so that’s a long time to wait.”
“I thought you and Abigail—” I hate bringing up her name because she doesn’t belong in this moment. Not anymore.
Spencer shakes his head. “That wasn’t until later. I was nervous. Watching that bottle spin…”
“It’s not like you had many choices.” I laugh, breaking the moment. “It was me or your sisters.”
“Kate was there, too. But I didn’t want to kiss Kate.”
“You wanted to kiss me?” I ask coyly, looking up at him.
“I guess,” he says, feigning indifference until I slap at his chest. “Fine. Yes. More than anything.” Spencer shifts again and pulls my legs over his lap. “Happy?”
“Very. What else?”
“Everyone spun, and Gunnar got Stella, and then Kate got him—”
“A love triangle even then. And then Odin got Sophie! I thought she would self-combust.”
We laugh at the thought of serious Odin bending to kiss little Sophie, who had been bouncing in her spot with excitement.
“And then it was finally my turn.”
The bottle had stopped between me and Kate but she had moved away so it was closer to me. Spencer hadn’t wasted any time like my brothers did; he crawled through the circle until he knelt before me. He barely looked at me before leaning in to press his lips against mine.
It was over too quickly, but it left me reeling for days.
Weeks.
“You tasted like cherries,” he says.
“My lip gloss.”
“They became my favourite fruit.” He laughs self-deprecatingly. “Every time I had one, I thought of that day in the dungeon. Also, whenever I had a sore throat and had Vicks cough drops.”
“You thought of me when you were sick?” I swat his shoulder this time.
“I thought of you all of the time.”
I catch my breath at the seriousness of his voice.
“I didn’t know it, Lyra, but I’ve been crazy about you for my whole life. Since that moment I first sawyou—”
“I was a baby,” I whisper. “That’s… ew.”
“Maybe not that far back,” he relents with a smile. “I don’t know when it happened, but it was always you.”
“You and Abigail…” I have to bring her up. I have to know where things stand with them because I can’t go into this second-guessing.
“She told me to figure it out with you. She could see it—I think she always knew that I was waiting for you.”
