Page 62 of The Haunting Plot

And if you don’t ride that man’s mustache, I will riot!

I can’t convince Hardy to grow his out.

“Everything okay over there? You’re huffing a lot. I can’t figure out if those are laughs or annoyance,” Sawyer says, breaking the silence.

“Maybe a little bit of both,” I admit.

“Care to elaborate?”

“I was texting Bella that she was right about something, and she’s gloating. And going off on tangents. She does that a lot. It’s one of the things I love about her, though, how unfiltered she is. She’s not afraid to be herself.”

“Neither are you.”

There’s so much warmth in his tone that I turn to look over at him. His left arm is propped up on the steering wheel while his right rubs his thigh. He looks nervous about something.

He reaches over and places his hand on my thigh. “Is this okay?”

“Yeah.”

His phone buzzes in his pocket, and he releases my thigh to dig for it. Immediately, I miss his touch, but I don’t have time to process that feeling as I watch him struggle with his pocket.

“Here, let me,” I offer, as I reach over and pull out his phone.

He glances down at the screen as I hold it out for him. “That’s Jocelyn. Will you answer it on speaker? This old truck doesn’t have Bluetooth.”

I tap the screen, holding it out for him.

“Hey, Joss.”

An annoyed voice emanates from the speaker. “What took you so long to answer?”

“Sorry, I was driving and had trouble digging my phone out of my pocket.”

“Jane just called and said she didn’t have her science project. You were supposed to help her finish it. It’s due today.”

“Shit. I totally forgot.”

“If you actually read your text messages, you would’ve seen my reminders about it.”

I can’t help the scowl on my face at the way this woman is talking to him.

He rubs at his chin. “I need to come up with a better system. All those notification bubbles overwhelm me.”

“You’ve been saying that for years, but you never do it. Can you please follow through with something in your goddamn life so I don’t have to keep cleaning up all your messes? Now I have to take time off from my workday to go to the school.”

“I’m sorry. Do you—” He’s cut off by the beeps of the call ending. “Want me to go up there?” he finishes his thought with a lack of his normal gusto.

“Does she normally talk to you that way?”

“It’s my fault. I completely forgot about the project. This is what I was talking about. I’m terrible at keeping up with stuff.”

I swipe on his screen until I find the clock app and pull up the alarms.

“What are you doing?”

“Helping you.” I set several alarms, labeling each one.

His face tilts to mine briefly, his eyes still trained on the road. “If it’s coming from you, I’ll take any help I can get.” His eyes flick to mine for a split second before he looks forward again, and the smile he gives me loosens something in my chest.