Page 61 of 6 Clues Your Nemesis Loves You

She gives a noncommittal shrug. “Family duty is big with them, and they didn’t tell me about her. When I was little, as far as I knew, they were my mother and father. Nicki—my birth mother—didn’t fight the adoption, and they decided I was better off not knowing about her.”

“Why wouldn’t they tell you?”

She unwinds our hands and fits hers into her pockets, making herself smaller. “My mother’s volatility is a black hole that can suck you in. They were worried if I got curious and reached out to her, she’d hurt me.”

We breach the forest, entering into a clearing that shoots me back in time.

Our magical pond.

The area looks smaller than I remember. No twinkle lights illuminate the water with fascination. There’s no crimson-haired siren calling me to her with her mischievous eyes and shark impressions, but I instantly relax, soothed by the memories here. My place of safety. Refuge during my tough last year of high school. Rounds of truth or dare. The tender ache of first love. Hours upon hours with this complex woman, who hides so much of herself.

“I missed this place,” I say into the crisp night.

Her sigh is thick with meaning. Loss? Nostalgia? The vividness of history out of reach? “I loved meeting you here. Couldn’t wish the daytime hours to race by fast enough.”

I smile. “I might have tripped a few times, eating dirt, running to meet you.” We stand beside each other, a world of memories filling the darkness. Maggie’s honesty fills a hollow in my chest. “Truth or dare,” I whisper.

One corner of her lips kicks up. “Dare, of course.”

“I dare you to let me hold you.”

She looks up at me sharply, her freckles nearly hidden in the blue-tinged darkness, but there’s no missing how her lips part on a near-silent intake of breath. “Your dares are getting weak in your old age.”

“Or more meaningful.” We’re standing close enough to feel each other’s heat, for her to hopefully understand my intentions. Let me be here for you. Let me absorb some of your sadness. “Do you accept the dare?”

She studies the stillness of the pond, the seconds elongating, then she opens her arms to me. Instead of going in slow, hugging her with quiet affection, I pick her up and swoop her into the air.

She shrieks. “Oh my God. Put me down.”

I toss her over my shoulder, firefighter-style, earning a few back-pounds. “This is the dare. I am officially allowed to hold you in any position I deem fit. Now let’s hear the rest of this story.”

“The only story I’ll be telling after this is the sad tale about the night you drowned in the Edelstein pond.” She pinches my sides, but my jacket saves me from her revenge-seeking fingers.

I smack her ass and howl at the moon while she snorts and squirms. She gets her hands up my shirt, finding skin after all, and turns herself into a human lobster claw. She pinches my side. I yowl and almost drop her, the two of us ending in a heap on the ground.

“You pinched me,” I say when I catch my breath, lying flat on my back.

“You are a menace.” She’s on her elbow, looking down at me, fondness in her tender gaze.

I trace the line of her black-and-white hair wrap. “I love these on you. You slay the fifties vibe.”

She traces my jaw, drags her fingertips over my beard. “I love this on you.”

“You just want to know how it’ll feel on your inner thighs.”

Her nostrils flare, but her mouth stays firmly shut. She doesn’t deny her desire. There’s no hiding the slash of color on her cheeks, even in the dim light.

I tug her down, fit us together so we’re a human puzzle, arms and legs intertwined with her head on my chest. “Do you know your birth father?”

She shakes her head, her hair wrap rubbing my beard. “My mother claims she doesn’t know who he is, but it’s hard to know with her. She’ll lie and cheat if it gets her what she wants. If I had to guess, she knows but wants nothing to do with the man.”

“And how’d you learn you were adopted?”

“By accident.”

When she doesn’t go on, I kiss the top of her head, glad we’re here for this talk. At our pond. The secret world where the story of Maggie and Lennon began.

She flattens her hand on my chest, silhouettes of trees guarding us from outside ears. “Emma calls me Goody-Two-Shoes because that’s who I am now—who I became. When I was young, I was wild. An adrenaline chaser, like my mother. At twelve, I hid all night in the forest because I thought it would be fun to freak out my parents. At thirteen, I took my friend’s father’s car for a joyride and crashed it into a telephone pole. That same year, I climbed to the roof of my house, determined to jump to the large oak in the backyard. I broke my leg in the process. A month later, I caused a fire at a friend’s home by setting off fireworks.”