I grab Stone’s hand and guide him to my dad’s shop. He takes one step inside and whistles. “Is this a bomb shelter or the world’s biggest chili cook-off?”
A throaty laugh slips from my mouth. “There’s a lot, isn’t there?”
“Not just a lot—enough to feed an army. Ortwo.” He nods over his shoulder at me. “My bet’s on two.”
One wall is covered in shelves filled with clear tubs containing either beans or rice. Those are thehomemaderations. There’s also a shelf devoted to military MREs, one for store-bought freeze-dried food ranging from chicken spaghetti to peach cobbler to strawberry oatmeal, and another shelf for five-gallon jugs of water.
I’ve been looking at this stuff for so long it’s hard to see it with fresh eyes, but I do my best and realize my family looks either completely well prepared or absolutely insane.
Might just be a mix of both.
“And look at those supplies.” Stone exhales another low whistle, suggesting he’s impressed. “I’ve never seen so much fire starter and steel thermoses.”
“My family makes go bags and sells them,” I explain.
He quirks a brow. “Go bags?”
“Yeah. You put them in your car, and if an emergency happens and you’re stuck in the wilderness for a while, the contents of the bag will keep you alive—if you know how to start a fire, that is.”
“That is so cool.”
I slide up onto a counter and swing my feet. “I guess. I never really wanted to have anything to do with it.”
He crosses over to me and places a hand on either side of my legs, pinning me in.
My pulse immediately rockets into outer space.
So many questions fill his jade eyes. “Why didn’t you want to work in the family business?”
I shrug, look away. “They wanted me to. It was kind of a big deal that I didn’t, because Brittany promotes the company on her channel and my family is busy. But I’m just not as passionate as they are about it. Also, I guess ... Well, you saw how hard it is to compete with my sister.”
“Hey—sorry about earlier. The whole table thing.” He rubs the back of his neck like he’s embarrassed. “But your mom, what she said—it didn’t sit right with me. It felt like a personal slight to you.”
My insides twitch. “No one’s stood up for me like that in front of them before. It’s not that I haven’t tried to. Some days it feels like I could tell my mother a million times that I hate something as simple as broccoli and she still wouldn’t hear me.” I exhale, and my body deflates. “It’s hard living in a shadow.”
“I guess it would be.”
He takes a step closer. His pupils are inky black. A strand of his hair is out of place. I slowly reach up and fix it. Stone closes his eyesand leans in to my touch. I can’t breathe. It feels like my lungs have stopped working.
His lids flutter open again and he murmurs, “As far as I’m concerned, you don’t stand in anyone’s shadow.”
My voice is barely above a whisper when I reply, “That means a lot.”
There’s a long pause before he says, “How long until Brittany finds us?”
It’s so unexpected that I can’t help but laugh, hiding my mouth behind the back of my hand. I lean back. “Well, this is my spot, so she should be here in about ten minutes or so.”
Stone takes a step back. “Your spot?”
“Yeah.” I slide off the counter and cross to the far wall, where there’s an unlocked cabinet. “We all have our designated spots. We’ve been in the same ones since Brittany started doing these. It’s part of the script. And this”—I tug open the cabinet—“is where I go. It might fit two of us.”
Itmight. The space is small and dark. The only way we’ll both squeeze in is if my knee locks between his legs and his hands rest on my breasts.
My fingers spark at the tantalizing thought. As if to answer them, the ground beneath my feet quivers slightly, like a weak signal trying to be heard. Through the window, I spot a blue flicker spill over the grass. It’s quick, gone just as fast as it appeared.
I’ve got to stop thinking about Stone this way. His hand does not need to be on my breast. We can’t get romantically involved.
He approaches, and a scary thought enters my mind: Did he see the magic? Did he witness the sparks on my fingers? Does he know?
