Page 16 of Sugarlips
My body was shaking, I was laughing so hard. I reached for anything I could… any weapon that might help me escape his grasp. The only thing within reach was one of my deranged unicorns which I grabbed and, reaching behind me, smashed into his face.
His laugh shook against me. His broad chest bounced with the low rumble of his booming laughter, and he lowered my feet slowly back to the ground before pushing his cupcake-covered face against mine and into my hair.
The door swung open and Finn came running in, wide eyed and panicked. “Holy hell… are you guys okay?”
I laughed and nodded. “Just a little, uh, kitchen mix up.”
“I thought we were being robbed or something,” Finn said, and his eyes fell to the disastrously messy kitchen. “I amnotcleaning this mess up.”
Liam chuckled and licked some frosting off of his fingers. “I’ll handle it.”
“Okay, then. I, uh, have that appointment thing. You good to take over out front?”
Liam nodded. “Give me five minutes to clean up.”
Finn hesitated for only a moment, then went back out front, closing the door behind him.
“Okay, okay,” Liam said. “You up for helping me run the registers until we close? Then we can come back here and make some donuts.”
Grabbing the nearest roll of paper towels, I tore off a few rectangles and tried to scrub the buttercream from my shirt. “I can do that.”
“So… truce?” Liam asked, and held out a hand for me to take.
“Truce.” I nodded and took his hand. But not before grabbing another handful of icing and smacking it into his palm.
His eyes widened as our palms connected with a smack of buttercream spraying between us. “You fight dirty, Dyker.”
“Get used to it, Evans.”
His grin widened. “I didn’t say I didn’t like it.”
5
Chloe
Elaina’s eyes went wide and she collapsed onto my couch, staring at the donut in her hands. Unlike me, she took the time to put hers on a small plate, while I wrapped a paper towel in one hand and held the donut in the other.
Her eyes flicked to the destroyed chair—Dan’s chair that I had taken a knife to last night. “Do I even want to ask?”
I shrugged as though stabbing a leather La-Z-Boy was a completely normal thing to do. “It was Dan’s chair.”
“Ah,” she said and thankfully let the subject drop.
“Do you want to talk about what happened?”
“Not really,” she said.
“Do you…dowe… hate Neil? Am I supposed to hate him, too, now?”
She shook her head, sadly and slowly sawed into her donut with her knife and fork. “No,” she whispered. “We don’t hate Neil.”
I nodded but didn’t push when she didn’t offer any more information. Even though she didn’t have to work today and had spent the day traveling, she still wore black dress pants and a crisp button-down shirt. While I, on the other hand, donned yoga pants and a tank top that said:My ideal weight is Jason Momoa on top of me. Elaina and I were as different as sisters could be, and yet, somehow, we were friends despite them. Like the ABC special I saw where the mountain lion befriended the goat. Elaina and I shouldn’t work… we shouldn’t be friends. Lots of sisters weren’t. But for some reason, our differences drew us closer.
She kicked off her ballet flats and tucked her feet under her as she took her first bite of donut. “Oh myGod, these are good.”
“Yeah?”
She was in the same spot Liam had been sitting when we watched movies last night.
