Page 79 of Love Me Reckless

“To distract me.”

“What do you want to know?”

She winces. “What you were like. What you did for fun.” She takes a slow breath. “The trouble… you’ve got into. All the hearts you’ve broken. Gimme all the dirt.”

I rub the tops of her fingers with my thumb. “Okay, princess. All the dirt.”

I tell her about my mom’s job at the grocery store and how sometimes she got to bring home food that was about to spoil, and howwe would try to cook with it, even when we didn’t know how. Things like broccoli soup—gross, or salmon soufflé—too fussy, or strawberry shortcake—which became a favorite.

I tell her about picking huckleberries in the woods behind the trailer park, eating so many my fingers and my tongue turned purple.

“Even my poop was purple,” I say.

She squeezes her eyes shut in a half-wince, half-laugh. “You’re making that up.”

“Nope. I even freaked out my mom.”

“I’ll bet. Quit making me laugh. If I have a crooked line, it’s going to be your fault.”

I tell Kirilee the story of how Shel and I broke a window by accident one time when we were playing midnight baseball with some of the other trailer park ruffians, but the memory of those kids and the trouble we caused, and what it led to, sends a warning spike through my gut, so I move on to the time a grizzly bear broke into our school lunchroom. Then I skip ahead to the earthquake that happened the fall of my junior year and how we hid under the desks while the walls shook.

“Get to…” She winces “The broken hearts.”

“All the dirt, huh?”

She smiles.

I tell her about when I got caught making out in the back row of the movie theater with my eighth-grade crush, Margaret Dunleavy. And about my first girlfriend, Allie Robinson, who broke up with me for a basketball player.

“How dare she?” Kirilee says, her eyes flashing. “Obviously she chose… wrong. Nobody likes… basketball.”

I laugh.

“Did you love her?” She coaxes a slow breath in and out.

“I thought so at the time. I was crushed when it happened.” But that was nothing compared how crushed I’ll feel when Kirilee marries someone else. How am I going to let her go?

Kirilee frowns. “Have you ever been in love?”

My stomach takes a dive. I focus on her fingers and shuffle my feet. My answer is on the tip of my tongue, but I lock it away. Because there’s no way I’m thinking clearly right now.

She squeezes her eyes shut and tightens her grip on my fingers. Leif is finishing the lines on her rib and the vibrations are humming through her bones.

Leif swaps out one machine for another and eyes her. “You doin’ okay?”

Kirilee inhales a slow breath and nods. “Tell me how it looks,” she asks me.

“It’s fucking stunning.”

She smiles, but her eyes quickly turn apprehensive. “It’s going to show.”

“Kind of the point, isn’t it?” And if she wanted to keep it covered, a modest one-piece swimsuit would do the trick.

“My dress.”

I frown, and then it clicks. Fuck.Thatdress. “You have so much courage, Kirilee.”

She winces. I glance at Leif, but he’s completely focused on his work.

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