Page 63 of The Hallows Queen

Her kiss is slow, filled with passion and emotion, like she can’t fucking help it.

When she pulls back abruptly, her face is pinkened and her lips are wet, her mouth dropped open as her chest heaves.

“You’re going to give me whiplash if you keep changing your mind,” I whisper, moving my hand from her jaw to her neck where her pulse is hammering.

She shakes her head minutely. “That was the last time.”

I squeeze her neck. “No it wasn’t. But I’ll let you believe that for now.”

I remove myself from her, standing up straight and catching her gaze one more time before I turn to walk away without another word.

* * *

“I feellike all we do is get high, man,” Levi says, throwing his feet up on the coffee table in the middle of my living room.

“Yeah,” I say around the blunt hanging out of my mouth. The TV hanging on the wall in front of us is playing some rerun of a basketball game, but neither of us is paying any attention to it. Levi has his laptop on his lap, and he’s been typing away on it in between hits from the bowl he has balancing on the couch next to him.

He looks up at me. “Should we do something more productive?”

I suck on the blunt, then slide it between my fingers as I hold the smoke in my lungs. After I’ve blown the smoke out, I laugh. “Like what?”

He shakes his head, looking at his computer again. “I don’t know.”

I choke on a laugh, standing up to walk to the kitchen. “We could get drunk.”

“Pass,” I hear him say at my back, and after I’ve pulled two water bottles from the fridge, I find my seat on the couch again.

I hand him one of the bottles, then point to the TV. “Where is Carson? Isn’t he the one who fucking recorded this game and insisted we watch it tonight?”

Levi shrugs, packing his bowl with the ass-end of his lighter. “I think him and Lo went to Franklin.”

I grab the remote and hit the power button, making the screen turn black. Taking one more hit off my blunt, I stamp it out on the coffee table before I stand up. “Let’s go find something to do, then.”

Levi blows smoke toward the ceiling, then points to the laptop. “Busy.”

I grab the screen and turn it toward me. “What’re you doing on here?”

He pulls it back. “Writing a paper.”

“You’re writing a paper on the first day of school?” I ask, taking a drink from my bottle of water.

“Yeah,” he mutters. “Apparently, I don’t have enough extracurriculars on my transcript, so the headmistress is making me apply for student government.”

“And you need to write a paper for that?”

“Some geek asshole I was mean to last year is the president or some shit, so he requested I write some bullshit about why I want to join.” Levi groans. “Karma’s a real bitch, huh?”

I laugh, then slap him on the back. “Good luck, brother. I’m gonna find something to get into. Lock up when you leave.”

He nods, staring at his computer as he starts typing again. “Use protection.”

I run upstairs to change and spray some cologne on myself, then head back downstairs when I’m wearing a pair of slacks and a tee, my feet in a pair of crisp white Air Forces that have never seen the light of day. I don’t know where I’m going, but I know what my destination is.

Her.

Shouting a goodbye to Levi on my way out, I jump into the driver’s seat of the Mercedes G-Class. I lift the center console in search of something to set the mood for the evening, and I’m not disappointed to find a little baggie of pills.

I open it and fish one out at random, placing it under my tongue. Tossing the baggie back into the center console, I crank the engine, then grab my phone and click on the tab I have open for Penelope’s Instagram.

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