Don’t think about it.
“Max, I’m doing my best to be neighborly, but perhaps now is not a good time,” Candi says, tone soft and wounded around the edges.
“Yeah, Candi, this is…” I shake my head and run my hand through my hair. My thoughts are all over the place.
Get it together.
Yeah, like you’re helping.
“I’m sorry. I’ve got it, Candi. Really. You should go before something else happens and you’re stuck here cleaning the whole place.”
“I don’t mind.” She bites her lower lip, and unlike when Lila did it, I have to swallow back a grimace.
Luckily, something in my expression must tell her I’m not in the mood.
“I’ll just—” She thrusts the paper towels in my direction. “Leave these with you.”
“Thanks.” I smile, though my heart isn’t in it.
“Max.” She pauses at the threshold, one hand on the doorframe. “Lila’s very sweet, but she’s not really your type.”
Get her out. Her scent is everywhere.
“I don’t have a type.”
“Everyone has a type. I can tell yours is more refined. Far from the kind of girl who faceplants into questionably made baked goods.”
“Thanks, Candi.” Jaw clenched, I shut the door behind her as she sashays down the walkway.
My fox is right. Candi’s perfume hangs in the air, cloyingly sweet and floral in a way that reminds me of Gran’s Bunco group. It’s everywhere except the one patch of floor where Lila had been, where her buttery, sugary, lemony makes my chest tighten.
Cake, three tiers of it—or what used to be three tiers—is spread across my entryway like a frosting smeared crime scene. And in the center of it all, the indentation where her body had landed.
A neon yellow thong.My fox observes.
“I’m not thinking about that.”
Nope, not at all thinking about how she’d looked back at me with those wide blue eyes and realized exactly what I was seeing.
And the blush.Jesus. The blush had started at her collarbones and spread like spilled wine, staining her throat, her cheeks, the tips of her ears.
She ran from us. Let’s chase her.
“Yeah,” I scoff. “I can imagine how well that would go over.”
Using the paper towels, cleaning solution, and trash bag Candi brought in from the kitchen, I crouch down and make short work of wiping up the cake.
All the while, my fox presses against the inside of my skin.She made that cake for us.
“A welcome present,” I mutter.
My finger sinks into a smear of buttercream caught on the outside of the trash bag. I lift it to my face, examining the texture. It’s silky. Not a bit of graininess. I wonder if she manually whipped it, worked up a sweat?—
Taste it.
I shake away the thought and spritz a bit of cleaning solution in the air to mask Candi’s lingering scent. I’d forgotten about the frosting on my skin until I catch my reflection in the hallway mirror on the way to the trash can.
You’re going to waste all that yummy frosting?
