Page 51 of The Enemy: Extended Edition

I smile before going to sit down beside her. We’re shoulder to shoulder now, and every inch of me is aware of every inch of June. I look down at her, and my eye is drawn to the way her loose sweatshirt drapes off her shoulder a bit. I slip it back up into place. “Now I see where all the swag comes from,” I say, gesturing toward her socks.

June wiggles her toes, and two light-pink spots hit the apples of her cheeks as she looks down at her lap. “Yeah. Mom’s been giving me this stuff for years.” A chuckle rolls through her, and she looks lighter than she has all week. “It’s our inside joke that Nick Lachey is my perfect man.”

“Stiff competition.”

“Oh, there’s no competition.” She looks up at me deadpan. “He wins, hands down.”

Now we’re both laughing. It feels good. Right.

“How much of this stuff do you have?” I ask, bumping my knee against her Nick-covered calf.

“I don’t think you want to know.”

“I do. But only so I can decide if you’re too freaky for me or not.”

She sputters a laugh. “Oh, I am, for sure. I have closets full of this sexy swag.”

“You don’t.”

June’s eyes glint when she looks up at me. “Wanna bet? My mom has been giving me these gifts almost weekly for five years.”

“Five years?” I ask but then wish I hadn’t because I see that June catches on to the math I just did in my head, and her smile fades.

She pulls her knees up to her chest. “I can see you figured it out. She started giving me this stuff the week I called off my wedding.”

“Did you tell her Ben cheated on you?”

Her lashes fan across her cheekbones as she looks at her toes. “No. I only told her that it didn’t work out. I tried to tell her several times in the beginning, but it hurt too much to talk about . . . and honestly, I just felt embarrassed.”

Seeing June like this, in her goofy socks, vulnerable and open with her hurt on full display, it makes me want to go hunt Ben down and knock his teeth out one by one.

“Have you ever thought about telling her what really happened?”

June’s shoulders tense, and for a minute, I think that I’ve just popped the intimate bubble we were in. But then she picks a piece of lint off one of her socks and says, “I have lately.”

I don’t know what it is about the way she said lately, but it’s as if she’s trying to tell me that something is different now. That something is changing her. Or someone. That she feels more comfortable about facing her past.

I inch my fingers across the floor until they intertwine with hers. She blinks at our laced hands and looks up at me. “You look cute covered in Nick Lachey’s face.”

She shakes her head, but her smile grows. “You found the note I kept, didn’t you?”

“Oh yeah. Several days ago.”

And then, like magic, June leans her head on my shoulder. Honestly, I’m afraid to move. She’s an exotic bird that has just landed on me, and if I shift even an inch, she’ll fly away.

I slowly lean my head back against the door and breathe her in. Her hair smells like oranges again today, and my hand aches to run down her smooth legs. But I don’t move.

“Ryan?” I don’t like her tone. It feels like she’s about to take flight. “When do you leave for Chicago?”

“When I do.”

“Seriously. You’re going to leave soon. We need to talk about that.” I can see what she’s doing—trying to sabotage us before we even get going. But I’m not going to let her.

Batten down the hatches.

“No, we don’t. We’ll figure everything out as we go. No need to have all the answers now.”

“I don’t like that.”

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