Page 107
LaBlanc is outside when we arrive, a polite wave from the fancy-ass house. It looks more modern, nothing like their antebellum home I knew like the back of my hand.
“Thanks for coming. Sahara, you look lovely.”
She smiles, a light blush as she nods and thanks him. One hand holds a highball glass with amber liquid inside, which he sips before looking at me.
“Kane,” he greets. “I didn’t see your usual death trap pull up.”
My nostrils flare, but I instantly relax as Sahara puts a hand on my forearm, desperate for her not to feel the tension in my body.
“We rode together,” she says with a polite smile. “Toren stays with us, so it was easier.”
She doesn’t mean anything by it. I know she doesn’t. But it doesn’t stop the inevitable sting of embarrassment under the knowing gaze of Lily’s dad. Because he knows my history. I grew up half living in his house. And now I live with my coach. Again.
Like a stray.
It doesn’t matter that Sahara and Nate Harris might be the only adults to never make me feel that way—I know what LaBlanc thinks.
I can say I don’t care until I’m blue in the face; it won’t make it hurt any less.
“How kind of you both,” LaBlanc says, before gesturing over his shoulder for me. “Holden is inside already keeping Lillian company, if you’d like to join them.”
Not bothering to try to decipher what kind of trick this might be, I stomp past the adults and into the main hallway, following Holden’s booming voice to the kitchen.
He’s sitting on one side of the bar area where Lily is standing in a navy blue dress with a white collar and black velvet bow in the dip at the center of her chest, legs encased in black sheer fabric and little black heels on her feet.
She’s fidgeting as I step forward, almost antsy.
“Lily,” I greet quietly, leaning it to kiss her cheek so that I can hear the audible gasp she lets out.
“Tor,” she says, but it’s practically a moan. I close my eyes and breathe in a hit of her expensive perfume for a moment, before I step back.
“Lily has been very anxiously waiting for you, Tor.”
Her nostrils flare, cheeks heating slightly in indignation.
“You’re the one who keeps talking about him,” Lily says to Holden.
My eyebrows rise at that, pouring myself some of LaBlanc’s most expensive liquor and intentionally spilling a bit of it on the heavy oak bar top. I settle between them both, smirking.
I don’t want to admit the satisfaction that statement brings me. To know that two people I care very deeply for are talking about me—and that it’s not negative . . . it’s a rarity for me. To know they want me here, that they might have been excited even to see me. To be near me.
Maybe it’s selfish, and I’d never say it aloud, but Holden and Lily are mine. I feel a deep possessiveness over them, two of the only people in this world who’ve dared to see anything deeper in me. That found me when I was battered and bruised and stitched me up.
There aren’t a lot of lines I wouldn’t cross for them, even if they won’t know or understand the depths of that care for them both. My best friend. The love of my life.
“Good to know I’m the hot topic tonight. Comparing kisses?”
Lily’s eyes widen. “You two kissed?”
Holden chortles. “Why, pretty girl? Want us to do it again?”
Lily audibly swallows, nearly like a cartoon character in her unabashed reaction. Her nostrils flare, and I know she wants to nod, agree, maybe even shove our faces together right here in her father’s house.
A laugh bubbles from me, light and free. I can’t remember the last time I felt like this.
I bend toward Lily where she’s sitting at the bar, swinging her feet.
“Don’t be dirty, Lily,” I whisper, my voice taking that mocking edge I know drives her up a wall. “Now that you’ve had my mouth again, I’m not letting anyone else touch it.”
