Page 139 of Fake it ’Til Fall

“I am stunned.” She lets out a breath, and it comes out annoyed and shaky and too honest. “Forrest, you kissed me so well I forgot what debt was for a second. That’s alarming. That’s not regret.”

My control takes a hit.

“Daisy.”

“What?” Her fingers tighten once in my shirt, then she notices and releases me like I burned her. Or like she liked holding on too much. “I’m being honest. Isn’t that in the rules? No lying when it’s just us?”

“It is.”

“Then no. I don’t regret it.” Her gaze drops to my mouth again. It comes back up slower, as if leaving costs her something. “I regret the timing. I regret the rain. I regret that my mother owns stairs and ears. I regret that Puck is in the room judging our life choices.”

At the sound of his name, Puck lifts his head from the rug.

Daisy points at him. “See? Judgment.”

“He doesn’t know what’s happening.”

“He knows vibes. Dogs are extremely vibe-forward.”

Puck yawns.

“Exactly,” she says. “Disappointed.”

“He almost ate a donut off wet grass today.”

“And yet somehow he still has higher moral ground than we do.”

She’s talking too fast.

I know that trick now. Daisy fills a room when silence starts telling on her. She smiles harder when she’s cornered. She turns feeling into commentary, pain into punctuation, panic into a bit she can sell if nobody looks too closely.

I look too closely.

That’s the problem.

I step back before I kiss her again without letting either of us breathe. “Puck.”

His ears lift.

“Hall.”

He stares at me.

Daisy’s eyes widen. “You’re exiling your son?”

“He’s not my son.”

“I can’t believe you’re denying him. He has your brooding eyebrows.”

“Hall.”

Puck sighs like I’ve betrayed him in a historic way, then hauls himself up and pads to the door. I open it. He steps into the hallway, turns around, and looks at Daisy.

Not me.

Daisy presses a hand to her chest. “Oh, don’t do that. I already feel morally compromised.”

“He’ll survive.”