“Fliss?” Izzy’s voice from the doorway forces us apart, and I fly off Noah’s lap and back into my chair with a speed I didn’t know I was capable of. Noah’s face is flushed and his chest risesand falls quickly as Izzy leans on the doorframe, rubbing her eyes. “What time is it? Can I have some water?”
“Sure,” I sigh, annoyed at past me for not taking the glass of water from Dad’s room to mine.
“I think that’s my cue to leave.” Noah smiles sheepishly before getting to his feet. He gestures at the pizza as I bite my lip, inwardly cursing Izzy. “Do you want me to clean this up?”
“No, you’ve done enough,” I say. Izzy looks at me, oblivious that I’m still feeling Noah’s lips on mine. My stomach twists with a yearning I’ve never felt before, and I realize I’d do anything to rewind the last five minutes. “Thank you,” I manage to say.
“No problem.” He rakes a hand through his hair and shoots me a crooked grin as he hovers for a second. “I’ll text you. Maybe we can do something this weekend?” I nod, my head bouncing like a dashboard doll, and he grins in a way that makes me wish Izzy was still asleep. “Speak to you later, then. Bye, Iz.” Noah rubs her arm as he passes her, and she nods sagely.
“Bye, Noah.” She waves.
I watch him leave, wishing I could follow him out and throw myself at him one last time, but I’m not that confident, and he doesn’t turn back. The front door clicks shut, and when I glance back at Izzy she’s looking between me and the door with shrewdeyes.
“Hang on.” She grins. “Did I just catch you kissing Noah Devlin?”
“Maybe.” I can’t help the grin that spreads across my face, and Izzy lets out a weak little kitten squeal.
“Details, now.”
“I would have some if you didn’t interrupt,” I protest, grabbing a glass from the cupboard. I spot a little white box on the top shelf and pull it down. Bingo. “Here, two of these, please.” I hand her two ibuprofen and fill the glass with water. “They should help with that lump on your head.”
“Lump?” She washes down the tablets and feels her face with the other hand. Should I be worried that she’s already forgotten she banged her head? “How did I do that?”
“You tell me.” I turn off the kitchen and living room lights, double-lock the front door and usher Izzy back to our room.
“I’m serious. I didn’t even drink that much,” she says, climbing back into bed. “There was only one bottle of wine in that jug, and you drank two glasses—”
“One. I poured two but never drank the second,” I correct her. “I stopped once I saw you were hammering it.” Izzy yawns and snuggles down.
“But I wasn’t! Scarlett had at least two glasses, and Ford had one.” She stops as a look of horror crosses her sleepy face. “Ford! What did he see?”
“Nothing,” I lie. Let her worry about that tomorrow.
“Good,” she mumbles. She’s fading quickly.
“I’m going to brush my teeth. I’ll be back in a second,” I whisper.
She makes a noise that I take to mean “okay,” so I grab my pajamas and go to the bathroom. I wash my face quickly and stare at myself in the mirror as I brush my teeth. I kissed Noah. Noah kissedme. I relive the feeling of him pulling me close as I rinse my toothbrush and float back to my room. Whatever justhappened between us, I need it to happen again, preferably very, very soon. I climb into bed next to a sleeping Izzy and look at my phone until my eyelids grow heavy and I have to resign myself to the fact that when he said he’d text me, he didn’t necessarily mean when he got home. Hopefully I’ll see him this weekend, though. And hopefully that will mean more kissing…
I grin to myself as I turn off the lamp and listen to Izzy’s even breathing until I feel the sweet pull of sleep—but that’s the moment something tickles my brain. I grab my phone from the nightstand and type into Google frantically. I click on a link that takes me to the Blackwood police website and read through a list of symptoms. Suddenly, all the warning signals from earlier tonight line up in a neat row: loss of balance, unconsciousness, vomiting, confusion…Izzy showed them all.
She wasn’t drunk.
Her drink was spiked.
TWENTY-SIX
I reach out to presssnooze on my alarm before I remember it’s Saturday and I didn’t set one. My phone is still trilling away, so I pull it from its charger and answer it without thinking. “Hello?”
“Fliss?” A fuzzy voice comes down the line and I peel my eyes open to glance at the caller ID. Dad.
“Hey.” I sit up, eyes widening as I realize Izzy isn’t in the room. How did I not hear her get up? Was she sick again? I try to keep my voice light. “How are you guys?”
“Finally got a break from the storm, but the weather still isn’t great,” he says as I slip out of bed. He hasn’t opened by saying the neighbors snitched on me, so that’s a good thing. “Listen, a handful of boats are running, but just to transport cargo and let some of the staff get home for now. The airline said we can get a flight home tomorrow, so I tried to bribe our way onto a boat, but no one is having it.”
“Dad, it’s fine, we’re looking after each other,” I say quickly, peering into the bathroom and Dad’s room. No Izzy, but the other bed has been stripped, and I feel a sense of relief. She mustbe up and about. “Honestly, I know you’ll be home as soon as you can.”
“I will, I promise. You want me to talk to your mom?”
