Page 18 of Bad Luck Club

“You’re a Junior, aren’t you? How is choosing to be known by your middle name any different?”

He thought about that for a moment, silent, then admitted, “I guess it’s not. Continue.”

There was something clipped and perfunctory to the tone, but she could tell he was trying to gather himself. She could see it in his eyes. Her words had stirred a kind of longing in him. He wanted to start living his life the way he chose to.

“There are only seven of us right now. We meet every other Sunday at three p.m., usually at Bear and Cal’s house. Whoever brings you to the club becomes your sponsor. Mine is Bear. What that means is—”

“You’d be mine?”

His gaze was more intense now, and his words…he’d meant that she would be his sponsor, of course, but the rough tone in which he’d said it had sent an unexpected shudder through her.

Which was ridiculous. She was just reacting to the moment, to the heightened emotions they both felt.

She swallowed, feeling the weight of his gaze. “I would. If you agree to this, there’s something we need to do before the meeting.”

He raised his brows, the spell of moments before lifting. “Is this where you ask for my social security number?”

“Not a cult, remember?” He rolled his eyes, a little echo of Adalia that made her smile. She wondered if he’d realized he was doing it. “The only way a group like this can work is radical honesty.”

“Sounds awful,” he commented.

“It is,” she admitted, because she’d meant it about the whole honesty thing. “At first. And then it feels more freeing than you can possibly imagine. We’re not supposed to lie to others in the group but especially not to our sponsors.” Rule #6, which really shouldn’t be that low on the list, but as Bear freely admitted, he and Cal had been tipsy when writing it. “The most important relationship is between a sponsor and their sponsee. Because your sponsor is the one who’ll be giving you challenges.”

“Challenges?” he asked. “What do you mean by that?”

“We get a new one every other week, assigned by our sponsor. They correspond with the theme of the meeting.”

He tilted his head. “Theme as in a theme bar? Or English lit class?”

“The latter.”

“And what’s the theme for this week’s meeting?”

“Finding confidence.”

He barked out a laugh. “That hasn’t been going so well for me. I’m not sure I need any more ‘challenges.’”

“How else will you live up to your potential?”

“If I knew, I wouldn’t be in this position.”

“Precisely,” she said archly.

“So this thing we would need to do.” He didn’t say it as innuendo, but he was looking at her in that way of his—as if he were trying to fit her into a box and couldn’t find one that worked—and she found herself curling her hand around the jasper tightly enough to hurt.

“We’d need to share our bad luck stories. Any questions you ask me, I have to answer. And the other way around.”

“Anything?” His perfect brows rose toward his hair, which was perfectly smooth, not like it had been the day of the Christmas party. Part of her longed to reach out and fix that for him. He’d looked more approachable with it tousled. More raw.

“Anything,” she affirmed.

“And would I have to do the same with everyone else in the club?”

He was actually considering it. She swallowed again, unsure whether this was a good thing, even though it was exactly what she’d set out to accomplish. “No, just me.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow evening would be good for me.” After she said it, she realized how it sounded. Like she was asking him on a date.

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