Page 50 of Spark

“Yeah. You?”

I nod. “Try to sleep. Close your eyes, and I’ll stroke your face and hair. That worked last time, before I woke you up screaming about Cooper’s song.”

Kendrick makes a sympathetic face.

“It’s okay. I feel much better about that. Cooper is dead to me now. I don’t give a fuck.”

“Good. Don’t let him ruin anything for you, okay? He’s not worth it.”

I exhale. “Okay.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

“Good girl.”

Shit. Good girl.That was smoking hot.

“Don’t let him win,” Kendrick murmurs, closing his eyes.

“I won’t,” I whisper. “Now, take deep breaths. You’re going to have an amazing, restful sleep.”

Kendrick smiles with his eyes closed. “You know what? I think you might actually be right about that.”

14

RUBY

Titus and I are lying in a flower garden together. Oh, it’s the garden at our grandma’s house. But we’re not kids, which is weird, since she passed away when I was twelve. We’re grown adults. The present versions of ourselves.

Even weirder, Titus is spooning me in the garden. Softly kissing my neck. His arm around me feels kind of nice, actually. Comforting and sweet. Not sure about the kissing thing, though. That feels a little incest-y.

Without notice, I feel the unmistakable sensation of a hard-on poking my ass cheek, and I’m pretty sure about that one: it’s most definitely incest-y.

Screaming, I scramble away from Titus’ erection and out of his embrace, and wind up falling off the edge of a cliff.

Thud.

“Gah.” When I open my eyes, I’m on the floor in my hotel room, crumpled in a heap right next to the side of the bed. The heavy blinds are drawn, keeping the room in sleep-inducing darkness, but there are narrow slivers of sunlight peeking through the edges of the window covering.

“Ruby?” Kendrick croaks out. “Are you okay?” He sits up and our eyes meet. His golden hair is a rat’s nest. His face is etched with concern, the whites of his eyes a telltale shade of “partied too hard last night” red.

“I, uh, had a nightmare. I’m okay.”

“You screamed like you got stabbed.”

“I dreamed a snake chased me off a cliff.” It’s not a complete lie. The hard snake poking my ass cheek most definitely made me scamper.

I stand up with a soft groan, prompting Kendrick to stretch and yawn—at which point, I notice an unmistakable tent pole poking up from underneath the flimsy top sheet covering his lap.

Apparently, I’m not subtle about staring at Kendrick’s crotch, because he quickly looks down and covers his eye-popping bulge with his hands.

“It’s not . . . ,” he begins. “I wake up every morning like this, pretty much. It’s not specific to?—”

“No, yeah. I’ve got a brother, remember? I know all about boys and morning wood.” It occurs to me that dream with Titus must have felt so real because Kendrick was spooning me in real life and kissing my neck. And Kendrick was . . . . Oh my god. Did my brain incorporate all those physical sensation from real life into my dream?

I check my phone on the nightstand. “Holy shit. My phone’s blowing up.”

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