Secrets We Keep (Thistle Cove 1)

I look around the little cottage. “Rose and I had a lot of good times. Sleepovers and birthday parties, middle of the night ice cream fests. We shared our dreams, our hopes, and futures. Until we were fourteen we did everything together; watched the same movies,” my eyes flick to the One Direction poster on the wall, “listened to the same boy bands and read the same books. We were yin and yang, and I’ll be honest, even though I had a fantasy that one day we’d be friends again, I always knew it couldn’t happen. There was too much pain, and we weren’t the same people anymore.”

I hold up the joint in a toast. “To Rose, the best friend I had and lost. The mystery. The myth. The legend. I hope it was worth it.”

I lean back and take a long drag, feeling the burn in my chest. I hold it as long as I can, wanting to numb myself just a little. This pain is something I never want to endure again.

I pass it along and lean back in the seat, my leg touching Ezra’s. The room is closed in, and we’re all getting a little hot-boxed and high.

“Tell us a little more about those books you used to read,” Finn says, his feet not so accidentally bumping into mine.

“What books?” Ozzy asks, head lolled back on the back of the chair.

“You remember those novels Kenley and Rose were reading all the time?”

“Finn,” I say in warning, knowing where this is going.

“The creepy covers? With the weird families?”

“Yep,” Finn says, a lazy but mischievous smile tugging at his lips. “They were basically reading porn.”

“What?” Ezra says, jolting up, like he’d just joined in the conversation.

“They were not porn,” I say, waving them off. If I wasn’t stoned, I’d be horrified and embarrassed, but I am, and I kind of find the whole thing hysterical. “They were taboo, forbidden romances, filled with family drama and intrigue.”

“And explicit sex scenes,” Finn adds.

“The weird thing,” I say, unashamed of my reading choices, “is that after finding out about the sugar daddy stuff, I’m not really sure I’m surprised Rose was into it. She loved the taboo content.”

“What about you?” Ezra asks.

Ozzy hasn’t said a word, he’s just watching our exchange quietly, eyes darting between us.

I tilt my head and take them in, each looking imposing in the undersized furniture. Finn handsome as always, strong-jawed, wide-shouldered. He’s caught somewhere between boy and man, but over the last two weeks he’s aged. Changed. I can tell from the glint in his green eyes, he really wants to know the answer.

Ozzy’s got his cap tugged down over his ears, but that doesn’t hide how his cheeks have leaned out over the last six months and the oversized T-shirt with a small hole up near the collar can’t hide his lean, fit body. He’s smart, so smart, to the point that when he looks at me like he is right now, I feel like he can see right through me.

Ezra’s the wild card; the drug charges, the record, the reputation. He’s spent the past few years half-feral, under-supervised and spoiled. His skin is warm and smooth, his lips full—almost like a girl’s—and when he smiles, it’s a sexy dare that mat

ches the dangerous swagger of his walk. I haven’t kissed him, but I kind of want to.

So yeah, maybe I am into the taboo. I try not to blush when I answer truthfully, “I may have my own desires that don’t conform to societies expectations.”

Finn swallows thickly. “Like what, uh, exactly?”

I sit up and pluck the joint from Ezra’s fingers and take a long, slow drag. When I finish, I bend down and do something I’ve only seen in movies. I touch his jaw and encourage him to open his mouth, shot-gunning the smoke between his lips. The smoke travels from my mouth to his, slow and sensual. I end it with a small, brief kiss.

I sit back down and pretend that they’re not all watching me, jaws dropped, on high alert.

“Now I’ve kissed all of you,” I say matter-of-factly.

A full thirty seconds pass, and they still haven’t responded, so I take a deep breath and say, “I like all of you. Ozzy for your smarts and wit. Ezra for persevering through shitty times. Finn because…well, you’re Finn. I’ve always liked you.” I give him a small smile. “But I’m also not the same girl I was when I was twelve—when we all hung out before. Maybe if Finn had manned up Freshman year and asked me to homecoming, we could have had a traditional happily ever after. Maybe if Ezra’s parents hadn’t gotten divorced, or Ozzy hadn’t retreated into himself… but that’s not what happened. We grew and changed. The past two weeks we experienced things we never knew could happen, and for me, one of those things is, like Rose, I want more. I want something different…something better.”

Ozzy, the fastest of the three, says, “And that’s all of us?”

“If that’s something you can handle.”

Ezra’s forehead is furrowed with deep lines of concern. “Are you saying you want all of us? Like right now?”

“It’s a relationship, Ez, not an orgy.” I wink. “At least not yet.”