Page 17 of Too Sweet

“It’s okay,” he says reassuringly. It’s dark, but I can hear the smile in his voice.

He sounds a little different. Bolder.

“Sorry I got huffy with you earlier.”

“You didn’t.”

“You have a certain way of expressing yourself and I’m not used to it.”

“Okay…”

“I don’t know if you could tell, but I almost kissed you again.”

“You did?”

Carter sounds genuinely surprised.

“Yeah, and I wanted you to know it’s okay if you’re shy. You don’t have to kiss me. back.”

“Noted,” he says. “I’ll be sure to tell?—”

I roll up on my tiptoes and softly kiss Carter’s lips.

They’re warm but strangely stiff.

They also feel wrong.

Very, very wrong.

Carter places his hands on my shoulders and pulls me off of him, and our lips part in a loud smack.

Someone flicks on the hallway light.

“What’s happening?” I breathe, forlorn that this kiss went so sideways.

The eyes that gaze down at me in shock are not Carter’s.

Carter is, in fact, standing at the end of the hall, with his hand on the light switch.

“Carter?” I ask.

Carter’s face is a mix of shock, hurt, and confusion.

I look back at the man I just kissed, and finally notice the things I didn’t register in the dark a moment ago: the eyebrows, the shape of his nose. The slightly different haircut. It’s Cooper.

I just kissed Cooper.

And I think Carter saw me.

Oh. My. God. I’m an idiot.

“Summer, what’s going on?” My sister has entered the hallway, and now everything somehow turned even worse.

I spin around, and Harmony stands at the other end of the hallway, looking like I just punched her in the gut.

chapter

seven

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