Page 108 of While You Were Trending

“Crush time,” Mabel says.

I pull my pillow over my head. “Go have fun without me,” I grumble.

“Declan’s gone.”

I spring to sitting so fast that dots dance in my vision. “What?”

“Left a little bit ago after getting some footage of Cricket and Dori and Winona in the fields, testing the merlot and Cab Sauv after the rain. He and Shade said they’ll get the video of the crush when we pick those.”

“So he just…left?”

“Apparently some opportunity he’s been waiting for came up.”

“He’s going back to hockey?”

She squints at me. “No. He’s going to shadow a guy who makes chocolate sculptures.”

“Oh.”

“And he brought his money-testing marker. The money’s real. Unless his marker’s a fake, but I don’t think it is.”

The money.

Dammit.

It’s real.

More real than my dreams of Declan.

Naked.

Kissing me.

Bending me over the counter in the gift shop.

Doing me on the tractor.

In my bedroom, which was clean in my dreams.

I shake my head.

Stop it, Ginny. Stop stop stop stop stop being bad.

Mabel pushes a pile of clothes aside at the foot of my bed and sits. “What happened yesterday?”

I grimace. “Bad decisions.”

She lifts her brows, waiting.

I know thehow long can one of us stand the silence?game, and I don’t have it in me to win today, so I don’t even try.

“He kissed me.”

“How many of his tires would you like slashed when he comes back?”

“Don’t slash his tires. I asked him to.”

She doesn’t blink. “Why?”