Fool Me Forever (The Confidence Game 2)

She’d been ready for a ravishing, tingling all over with anticipation of something sweet and exploratory or happily punishing after all the buildup. Either would’ve fed the fire, but he’d held back because he’d definitely want permission, and everything about them was confused. Allies or enemies? Partners or just hormones gone wild?

It was so frustrating she could smash something.

“I’m going to bed, but if you want to talk, I’ll be reading,” she said to the door. She’d be lying on her bed looking at the ceiling, trying not to think about his hand on her face and how he’d looked at her and time stopped and all that existed in the world was their twinning heartbeats as they stood on the brink of something extraordinary.

That became some kind of end-of-the-world, not-kissed adrenaline slump.

Just as well they hadn’t kissed. It would make things even more confusing.

They clearly couldn’t work together. Halsey had tensed when she’d touched his shoulder, laughing about the idea of him being the type to have an outrageous tattoo. He’d tensed in the corridor big time. But he hadn’t flinched from taking Easton on, and that was going to bounce back at her in unknown and uncomfortable ways. Her brother might well have been a mugger of a different stripe, but Halsey had interfered without fully understanding the consequences.

She should be angry about that, but it’d been a long time since anyone had come to her defense in any way, and Halsey had done it three times now, if a little recklessly.

She changed her pajama-like dress into a tank and sleep shorts and lay on her bed, only to have to get up to retrieve her phone from the dresser when it beeped. Totally worth the effort. A text from Easton announcing he was leaving town and blaming Lenny and her “accountant” in quotation marks for emphasis, for depriving him of the funding he needed to start his business and restore the family name.

That was a stroke of unbelievable good fortune.

Score one for the accountant.

She hit delete so hard it’s a wonder she didn’t leave a scorch mark on her phone screen. She felt nothing except relief. With Mom in Florida and Easton going wherever he thought the sun would shine brighter and the money rain harder, she only had to worry about Mallory and D4D. That felt like being on vacation with all the best books and the greatest food and plenty of time to sleep in.

When Mallory appeared, she had her phone in one hand, a packet of markers in the other, and a pink-and-purple unicorn drawn on her upper arm. It had the words “everything is shit” shooting out of its butt.

“He’s going away,” she said. She’d gotten the same text.

“It won’t be forever.” Easton had gone off before, grievously misunderstood and wounded. It should win them a few months of peace.

“Not sure I’d care if it was.”

“Want to talk about what happened?”

Mallory altered her marker ink, adding the word “not.” Her unicorn now farted the words “not everything is shit.” She sat on the bed when she’d finished. “That was rad what Halsey did. He caused a fight and I hated it, but now I kind of like that he did it. He stood up for us.” She crawled up the bed to where Lenny lay on her side and sat across her legs. “Men are confusing.”

“They sure can be.” Mallory’s hair was wild, and she smelled of the cigarettes she smoked out of the bedroom window. That was an issue to tackle, but not tonight.

Mal waved a marker in her face. “You need a unicorn, too.”

And because men were confusing, and Lenny felt the same way as Mal did about Halsey, she let her draw a unicorn on her arm. It was green with a purple mane and tail, and oversized eyelashes.

Adding colored swirls to the unicorn’s horn, Mal said, “You’re into him, right?”

Lenny cringed, making the purple marker whip across her skin, ruining the drawing and earning herself a hard pinch on her ass.

Mal sat back, considering the damage. “He’s fun. And he doesn’t smell like baby vomit or wear a brown cardigan, and he didn’t take any shit from me. He out-bullied Easton. He’s hot. You could do worse.”

She could do worse. Especially for a kiss. She’d like to kiss Halsey properly on his lips. Wind her arms around his neck, pull him down, and see if he tasted like something illicit and horribly bad for you. If he reacted anything like he’d done for a nothing burger, fleeting cheek buzz, shocked and so freaking intense, it would be worth it.

Really, they should just get naked, get it out of their systems, and be done with each other. Half of the reason he was so attractive was because he was the worst possible choice.

Mal leaned down again. “I can fix this,” she said, and proceeded to draw a sunset behind Lenny’s unicorn. She was good at this. Maybe she had a future in inking tattoos. It didn’t matter what Mal decided to do with her life, as long as she was happy doing it and free of the taint of their family shame.

“I’m going to make it say ‘maybe okay will be our always,’” Mal said.

“Do not put that on me. Put ‘this too shall pass.’” It was a message for Mal. A tiny prayer in black marker that her sister might take in as she wrote it on Lenny’s skin.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about the piercing,” Mal said.

“No, you’re not.”