Page 38 of The Complete Truth Duet
“Pssshhh.” She rolled her eyes so hard that I thought they might roll out of her head. “I think Drew might be the only one in the building who doesn’t realize you’ve been obsessing about Penn.”
My mouth fell open. “What?”
Savannah came up and stood behind River, reaching over her shoulder to grab a piece of bacon too. “Oh, come on, Cora. Don’t play dumb. Drew’s got it for you bad.” She took a bite and spoke around it. “Only problem is you’ve got it bad for his brother. Dun. Dun. Dun.” She grinned as she finished chewing.
“Okay, first of all—”
“Truth or lie?” River interrupted.
My mouth clamped shut. We’d been playing this game for years. It was simultaneously the best and worst thing I’d ever thought up.
On one hand, it gave us a way to communicate about the hard stuff. On the other, it gave us a way to hide the even harder stuff.
In our lives, lies were sometimes necessary. She was just a kid; she didn’t need to know all the horrors that happened on a daily basis. But our little game made discussions safe for us. If you told someone you were lying, was it really a lie?
I swallowed hard. “What do you want?”
“Truth.”
I sucked in a sharp breath. “I wouldn’t say I’ve been obsessing about Penn. But…I have certain…well, feelings about him that… Fine. He’s…piqued my interest.”
Savannah grabbed another piece of bacon. “It’s because he’s hot.”
I turned back to the stove, catching River’s smirk on the way around. “No. It’s because he’s nice.”
River barked a laugh. “And hot.”
“Hey! You are not old enough to be calling anyone hot. Unless it’s a twelve-year-old boy from school who makes straight A’s and has plans to become a priest but just so happens to have a giant trust fund but he needs a wife to inherit it when he turns twenty-one.”
“I see you’ve given this some thought.” She scoffed and moved past me to the pantry. “And I’m thirteen, Cora.”
“Yeah, but I liked you better when you were twelve.”
She laughed. “Do we have any cookies?”
“You know I don’t keep that junk in the house.”
Savannah assumed River’s position and leaned her hip against the counter. “Is that the truth or a lie?”
See, it was times like these—when my precious sweets were in jeopardy—that our little game backfired on me. But that was the thing about games: When you made them up, you got to make all the rules.
“Hey, hey, hey. You have to have good grades before you’re allowed to play.” I arched my eyebrow. “I saw that C in your bookbag.”
She looked away sheepishly. “I’m not good at math.”
“That’s crap and you know it.”
She opened her mouth to object, but a knock at the door silenced us all.
Nerves rumbled in my stomach as I stared at the locked door. He was right on time.
“You want me to get that?” Savannah whispered.
“No,” I whispered back, but I kept staring at the door.
River sauntered through the small kitchen, a bag of my prized chocolate chip cookies in her hand. “Right. This is you, totally not obsessing.”
Coming unstuck, I plucked the cookies from her hand and tossed them onto the counter. “I swear to God, if either one of you embarrasses me in front of Penn, I will wash all of your white clothes with red socks. Got it?”
They glanced at each other and grinned. Savannah made a zipper motion across her mouth.
Blowing out a calming breath, which coincidentally wasn’t calming at all, I smoothed out my shirt and did a quick pat-down of my hair. I was being silly. It was just Drew and Penn. They’d been in my apartment every day for going on two weeks. This was no different.
Except, when I pulled the door open, finding Penn standing completely alone on the other side, wearing a pale-blue button-up that made his eyes so bright that they might as well have been glowing, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, showing off thick muscles covered by black ink, a six-pack of beer, and a store-bought tin of brownies in his hands, I knew I wasn’t overreacting.
I was seriously, seriously underreacting.
“Wh…where’s Drew?”
His brows pinched together. “Couldn’t make it. That okay?”
“Yeah, of course!” I exclaimed—entirely too loudly.
And we stood there. Me a statue. Him waiting to be invited inside, but, again, I was a statue so…
In the awkward lull, his gaze dipped from my head to my toes and then back again. And, as if he’d reached out and touched me, I felt it from my nipples to my toes—and everywhere in between. My skin exploded with chills, and my mouth ran dry, rendering me unable to speak. Not that I had any words. A crazy combination of anxiety, fear, excitement, and maybe even a touch of desire bloomed within me as I continued to stare at the beautiful man standing in my doorway.
