Page 100 of Coco and the Misfits

“Were you redecorating again?” she demands. “God’s sake, Coco.”

“I wasn’t. And redecorating is a ritual.”

“Of course it is.” She sighs. “Dark magic? Voodoo?”

“Look, I’m a ten, definitely, but I’d have been burned at the stake in the Middle Ages.”

“Only the Middle Ages?” she quips.

“You’re right, last century too.”

She giggles.

I grin.

“You’re incorrigible,” she says.

“I missed you,” I confess. “What’s going on? Why did you disappear?”

“Long story.”

I lean back against my pile of cushions. “I happen to have some time on my hands.”

“Well…” She clears her throat. “I met someone.”

“I am shook.” I snort. “Okay, not really, but do tell. Is it a pack?”

“Yes.”

“The Sexton Pack, by any chance?”

She sucks in a breath. “Who told you?”

“A little bird. Why is it such a mystery?”

“Because… I don’t know what I’m doing,” she blurts out, “and I haven’t decided yet, and I’m staying away from everyone until I decide.”

“… okay,” I say after waiting for more and getting nothing. “Is it something dangerous you got yourself into, woman? If so, you have to tell me.”

“I… don’t think so.”

I sit up. “June. That’s far from reassuring. What the hell? Where are you?”

“I have to go now. Talk another time?”

“Wait, June?—”

She disconnects. I stare at my phone.

She disconnected on me. Good God. I hope she knows what she’s doing. I need to talk with Sawyer and Gigi about this. Not Bee, I decide. I don’t want to scare her. But someone.

We have to find out what’s happening with June.

Just then, I hear a knock on my door.

It’s kind of early for Zach, and I haven’t received a text from him, but I know what expects me outside.

Wondering if today it will be a bunch of roses or a single one, what he might have written in the little note, and whether this time he’s right there, waiting for me, I go to open.

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