Page 5 of Bad Moon Rising

And second, I doubt there’ll ever come a time in my life when I won’t need Jackson and Orion. And Brooks, though thinking of him makes my stomach do cartwheels. And not the fun kind of cartwheels, but ones when you go too fast and make yourself sick. No, the last thing I want to think about is the eldest Bellua brother with his honey-golden hair, features carved from limestone, fathomless dark eyes and…

“Earth to Daisy.” Jackson taps his knuckles against the side of my head as I blink myself out of my Brooks-induced reverie. That seems to be a constant state for me ever since he left town on my sixteenth birthday nearly two years ago.

“Yes?” I blink up at him, and his grin broadens, revealing, once again, that treacherous dimple that makes me want to…

Lick it.

Yes, I want to lick his dimple, and I hate it.

Friends do not lick friends’ dimples.

“Did you listen to a word I just said?” Jackson sounds amused. We hurry through the hallway, down a flight of stairs, and then in the direction of our first class.

“Nope. Sometimes I think you talk simply because you like the way you sound,” I point out jokingly, and he gasps dramatically.

“Lily Daisy Dean!” He shuffles my textbooks around until he’s able to point a finger at my chest. “I’m hurt and offended. You have cut me to my very core. You have pierced my heart with your arrows. You have sliced me open with your words and jiggled my organs around—”

I swat his finger away with a giggle. “My middle name isn’t Daisy,” I remind him…for the umpteenth time.

For as long as I remember, Jackson has called me Daisy. On the day we met, six-year-old me wandered into the Bellua backyard and timidly told the three boys that my name was Lily and I wanted to play with them. Jackson tilted his head to the side, pointed at the daisies printed all over my favorite sundress and then confidently declared, “No! Your name is Daisy!”

I pretend to be bothered by the nickname, but I secretly love it when he calls me that. It’s almost like…a secret. Something intimate shared between us that no one else knows or even understands.

“You know—” Jackson moves in front of me and walks backward, expertly maneuvering around the students present without even looking at them— “we’ve been best friends for years, and I still don’t know your middle name.”

“And you won’t ever know my middle name,” I reply with a laugh.

“Because it’s ugly?” Jackson asks. “Is it Cruella?”

“No.”

“Mabel?”

“Nope.”

“Constance?”

I shrug. “Maybe…”

His verdant green eyes narrow. “Or is it just an average, boring middle name? Is your middle name, like, Marie or some shit?”

“You’ll never know…” I hedge, skirting past him to enter the Chemistry classroom before he can. His footsteps thunder against the tiled flooring as he chases after me.

“Margie. Jane. Benetha. Toad. Shrimp,” Jackson ticks off his guesses as I slide into my desk near the back of the classroom. He takes his seat beside me.

“When are you going to let this go?” I take my Chemistry textbook back from him with a wide smile and shrug off my backpack.

Jackson has been trying to figure out my middle name for years now, but I refuse to tell him what it is. Not because I’m embarrassed of it or anything…but it’s funny to see him so riled up about something so inconsequential. And what’s even funnier is the fact that both Brooks and Orion already know it and they’ve sworn to take my secret to their graves.

Jackson growls out something incomprehensible that sounds suspiciously like, “Insufferable woman.”

I smirk as I organize my pens on my desk—red, then green, then blue, and finally black closest to my notebook.

Jackson tries a different approach, pushing out his bottom lip and offering me puppy dog eyes. I usually don’t think puppy dog eyes work…but on him? With his fringe of long, ebony lashes? With those piercing green eyes capable of searing away my flesh and peering directly into my soul?

If I didn’t have years of practice being immune to Jackson’s charm, I might’ve told him my middle name right then and there. My middle name, my credit card number, my social security number… Anything he asks for.

I’m an absolute sucker for this man, and I hate myself for it.

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