Page 67 of Hot Summer

Cas frowned. “With... Sienna?”

“No, she and I already talked about that.” He waved his hand dismissively, clearly losing his patience. “With you and Ada. Si said you kissed her.”

In spite of herself, Cas felt her cheeks heat. “Yeah.”

Femi made a sound that was somewhere near a laugh and a suppressed scream. He grabbed both her arms and shook her in his excitement, and Cas felt her own laugh tumble out.

“I guess you’re excited.”

“Of course I’m excited! What are you going to do now?”

His enthusiasm was contagious and impossible to ignore, especially when she was confined in such a small space with it.

“I don’t know.” Christ. She was giggling like a schoolgirl. “I guess we’re going to have to talk about it. Figure out what our next step is going to be.”

“I think we all know what it should be.”

In that moment, Cas found herself wishing that she could explain the entire situation to Femi. There was a chance that he wouldn’t be happy with her when she explained the original reason that she’d come on the show, but she thought that he would forgive her. Or, at least, she hoped he would.

But she knew it was impossible. She could practically feel the NDA she’d signed shoving the words back down her throat. It didn’t stop her wanting to lay out every single complication to get his honest opinion on what she should do.

“You don’t think...” She stopped, changed her mind. “Do you think she wants to partner up with me?”

“Cas.” Femi squeezed her elbows, pressing his words into her skin, making sure that she couldn’t forget them. “That girl is obsessed with you.”

Cas groaned. “Are we sure, though?”

The fact that Cas was debating this, even after their kiss, must have made this the most sapphic moment in the history of Hot Summer. Only a moving van would make this gayer.

Femi nodded firmly and refused to let her escape his gaze even when she tried to look down at the floor. “We’re sure. Now”—he threw open the loo door—“go get her! The losers will be watching you from the balcony.”

“Oh great, because having an audience will definitely make me feel less nervous,” Cas said. She checked her reflection in the mirror over the sink—her heart speeding up when she noticed the stickers Ada had added. They were perfectly placed.

“That’s what I figured,” Femi said.

He only laughed when she held her middle finger up at him on her way out the door.

The back garden was covered in UV lights when Cas walked outside, so everything had an eerie purple glow. There were neon body-paint markers in a jar on the kitchen island, more glow-in-the-dark sticker sheets scattered around, and club music blasting over the speakers. They were small changes, but Cas felt like she’d stepped out of the villa and into a disco dream.

She grabbed one of the body-paint pens—yellow, she thought, though the light was distorting the color—and started shaking it up as she walked out to the garden. Most everyone else was already dancing around in the grass, heels kicked off onto the pool deck in favor of dancing barefoot. Freddie grinned at her, his teeth a shock of white in the black light.

He grabbed her free hand and spun her around to the beat, making sure to keep a respectful distance between them. “Nice dress.”

“Thanks.” She held up the paint marker and shook it. “Want some tattoos?”

He held his arm out without hesitation and Cas filled his arm with stars and swirls. They weren’t perfect and definitely weren’t neat, but there was a reason she wasn’t an artist.

Freddie beamed at them, turning his arm so he could appreciate her designs. “Stunning. Now, let’s dance!”

They were less dancing as pairs, but more as a crowd, all of them jumping and spinning and grabbing one another, letting the music take them. Ada and Sienna joined a few songs later, Sienna immediately getting swept up with Tia. Freddie had taken Ada’s hand when she joined them, but had just as quickly spun her into Cas with a wink in Cas’s direction. Cheeky bastard.

“He seems nice,” Ada said. She was loosely moving her hips to the beat, but wasn’t quite dancing.

“He is,” Cas agreed.

“You going to go for it?”

If there was a moment to decide, this was it. Ada was giving her an out, a very clear choice—did she want to choose Freddie? Or, unspoken, but there in her eyes, did she want to choose Ada instead?

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