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“Have you forgiven me yet for not telling you about your sister?” I asked.
Her hazel-gray eyes opened again, and she sent me a sad smile. “I suppose. Being around you kind of makes me forget to be sad, so it—ooh! Hey. Speaking of Kins, I never got a chance to tell you about my dream. I saw her last night. And your brother too.”
“Hayes?” I asked in surprise.
She nodded.
After she explained Hayes’s job of guiding spirits and his theory about the pathway in her head and getting to see her sister and meet her mom, I sighed. “So he’s still seven when you see him?” When Raina nodded, I shook my head. “Weird. For some reason, whenever I think of him, I picture him at the age he should be now. Almost nineteen and a freshman in college. I see him as this perfect mix between me and Reed.”
“I think he would’ve been the shortest of the three brothers,” Raina played along. “But maybe the huskiest too.”
A smile spread across my lips as I admitted, “Hedidlike his sweets.”
Raina chuckled before falling serious. “I wonder how I’ll continue to think of Kinsey.”
“I don’t know,” I murmured quietly.
She grew pensive, lost in her own thoughts before focusing on me again. “So you’re back to classes again tomorrow, right?”
I nodded. “Yeah. Think you’ll be up for a full day of walking around campus with me?”
She sighed. “It’s going to be so weird not going to my own classes.”
Feeling bad for her, I offered, “I could go to a few of yours and sit in so you can hear the lecture if you want?”
“Absolutely not,” she ordered sternly. “Your life’s already been altered enough to make room for me. You’renotmissing any of your own classes.”
“What major are you, anyway?” I asked, curious to know more about her.
“Early childhood education,” she answered. “I think I’d like to teach either second or third grade. Somewhere in that age range.”
I nodded. She definitely had a sweet elementary teacher vibe about her. “And you’re a junior?”
“Sophomore,” she said. “I came in just when you were rising to fame with your football career, which is probably why my crush is so strong.”
She rolled her eyes at herself, and I smiled, wishing I could reach out and just touch her hair.
“I’m sorry I didn’t agree to meet you when Oaklynn first suggested it. I just…” With a shudder, I admitted, “Setups freak me out.”
“No, I get it,” she agreed. “I’ve never had any luck with blind dates either. Jaylani set me up with this guy my freshman year, and oh my God.” Groaning, she rolled her eyes. “It was so awful. I feigned a stomachache halfway through dinner and tossed some cash at him to pay for my half of the meal before booking it out of there.”
I lifted my eyebrows. “Wow.”
“You probably know him too.” With a shudder of revulsion, she added, “He writes most of the sports articles in the school paper.”
My eyes bugged. “Oh God. Please don’t say Connor Resson.”
When she groaned through a guilty wince, I threw my head back and laughed, only to slap my hand over my mouth because I laughed way too loudly. “Shit. I hope I didn’t wake the whole damn house.”
Raina snickered at my reaction.
Dropping my fingers, I told her, “I hate that guy so much. I swear, he baits me every time he interviews me as if hewantsme to say something he can crucify me with.”
“Probably. He’s incredibly full of himself; he can’t handle anyone else being more popular than he is. From the moment I met him at the restaurant, all he did was talk about how wonderful he was and how awful everyone else was. And the way he treated the waitress…”
When she made a disgusted face and shook her head, I grinned. “I am so glad I’m not the only one who can’t stand him. All the other guys on the team suck up to him, and it drives me crazy.”
Raina wrinkled her nose. “Bleh. Why?”
