Page 125 of Friends Don't Kiss

Declan leans on Colton’s door to look inside the car. “Is that what they call it now?” he jokes, then squints. “Sorry, guys, that was out of line.” He unfolds out of our space, straightens, and takes long strides toward Daisy, his voice coming to us in a low, even tone.

“What is he doing?” I whisper.

“He’s talking to her.” Colton chuckles. “Fuck. The life of a small-town cop.”

By then Lynn’s two sons are with Daisy, and the one on the horse (I can’t tell who is who) has her roped in. Declan seems to be stroking her.

“Is he…” Colton says.

“…collecting evidence?”

Declan turns around, fussing with a ziplock as he gets back to us while Daisy follows the horse without an issue.

“I might have you come by the station for questioning,” Declan tells us sternly, then continues onto his patrol car.

“Seriously,” Colton mutters as he drives us back to Sunrise Farms.

“Can we sleep at your place tonight?”

He folds my hand in his. “Sweets, you don’t need to ask. That’s what you want, that’s what we do.”

He pulls me up the staircase to his apartment, unlocks his door, and throws his keys on his kitchen counter. I’m a little numb from tonight’s events, but being in Colton’s apartment stirs something primal inside me. A few dried coffee grounds on the kitchen counter, a rumpled throw on the couch, the TV remote on the floor—all this always felt familiar to me. Now it feels more. It feels like home.

Later, after he’s made gentle love to me in his bed, his fingers roaming up and down my bare back, he says, “I got two random questions and you don’t need to answer either. How long we gonna keep two apartments, and should I just pretend you never told me anything about Isaac’s sister?”

I snuggle deeper in his embrace. “I never told you anything about Isaac’s sister,” I say, and fall asleep.

forty-six

Kiara

We’rehavingcoffeeathis kitchen counter the next morning, and his question still haunts me. But if he’s still thinking about it, he doesn’t show it.

I can’t quite articulate why the idea of moving in with Colton terrorizes me. I’m torn between wanting this so bad it hurts, and feeling like the day we share a set of keys will set in motion the beginning of the end. Nothing can possibly be better than the state we’re in right now. If we mesh our lives deeper together, the untangling might hurt too much to bear.

I’m lost in these thoughts when my phone rings.Mom. Any other day, I would let it go to voicemail. But not this time.

Her voice has lost the bite that’s always been there since I exposed Dad. “Now that he’s gone, I feel I can tell you,” she says, after I ask her how she’s doing. I know she never got over him, her resentment over what I did proof of that.

“Tell me what?”Isn’t it bad enough that we were his second family?

Colton stops fussing over eggs to sit next to me.

“As long as you keep it to yourself,” she adds.

Really? This family has an obsession with secrets. I’m not promising to keep anything to myself. For one, I’m sharing everything with Colton. That thought fills me with more confidence than I’ve had in a long time. I don’t even feel rattled that there’s more that’s been kept from me. There’s a sort of distance between me and my blood family that doesn’t pain me anymore.

“The reason your dad disappeared from our lives,” Mom says when I stay silent.

“Okay?”

“He… he was married to… he had married into…” She’s so quiet I wonder if the call dropped.

“Hello?”

“Into a family that dealt in organized crime.”

I look at Colton. “Dad was in theMafia?!”

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