Page 27 of Alive At Night

eleven years ago

“Please tell me you’re wearing a swimsuit under that towel.”

Juniper shook her head slowly.

“No swimsuit, no clothes…so can we please just get—”

I cut her off with an irritated groan, scrubbing a hand over my face. When I dropped it, my eyes flicked over Juniper, unable to resist myself.

“Where the fuck are your clothes?”

“Jace stole them from the beach when we were swimming.”

“Fucking asshole,” I grunted. “He didn’t see you, did he?”

Both my sister and Juniper shook their heads.

But I was still going to kick Jace’s ass.

“Can we just go?” Juniper whined with a defiant little stop. “We can fix the car later.”

I watched as a little shiver worked through her. Without thinking, I whipped my shirt off, walked it over to her, and stuffed it over her head. She didn’t complain as she snuck her arms through the sleeves and wrapped them around her, hugging my shirt to her chest.

I turned around, not liking what the image did to me.

“I’m fixing it now. I’ll be quick,” I mumbled. “I’m not letting you drench my fucking car in lake water.”

“Can I help?” Juniper offered as I crouched in front of her busted tire. I heard the sound of gravel crunching as she took a step forward, and I gritted my teeth.

“No, just—stay over there,” I rasped. “Please.”

Juniper’s sigh was like a cool breeze on this otherwise hot summer night.

“Fine.”

CHAPTERSEVEN

julian

LATE NIGHTS WITH JUNIPER St. James were not a new concept.

From the minute Gemma introduced us, Juniper and I communicated in various forms of insults. I didn’t like her always beingthere, squeezing her way into our already overcrowded house. And she didn’t like…well, me. I never took the time to figure out why Juniper didn’t like me because the feeling was mutual. Thewhydidn’t matter.

Deeper irritation didn’t start until later in high school, though. Mostly because I liked my sleep. And Juniper liked being the reason for me not getting it. She had a bad habit of barging into my room at all hours of the night. Even after years of sleeping over at our house, she never learned how to correctly count the goddamn doors in the hallway. She also had a bad habit of winding up in unbelievable predicaments. Like when she and Gemma wound up stranded and naked on Lock Island.

Christ, that night.

Juniper’s flat tire might have been easy to change and relatively easy to patch, but I’d still had to stay up until three in the morning to do it. The last thing I’d needed was for her to have an excuse to still be at my house when I returned from football practice the next morning.

Hell, that was the shittiest practice I ever ran. I was nearly an hour late from being so goddamn exhausted, and it hadn’t exactly been a good look, not when there had already been people saying that Greg fucking Kennedy should have been captain over me.

Tonight was just another one of those nights—the ones where Juniper kept me from getting enough sleep. I was in bed by a little past midnight, but annoyingly, I couldn’t get comfortable. Noah had already texted me like five times since I made it back to my apartment.

Okay, fine. It was once so far. But the words kept repeating in my head, making it feel like more.

LONDON: Juniper single?

This was why it hadn’t been necessary for us to go to the game. Besides almost throat-punching that guy after he said shit to Juniper in the street, I’d had fun. Grayson and Noah both scored, and Juniper was surprisingly nice enough not to interrupt my concentration on the game. But the Noah-Juniper meet and greet didn’t need to happen.

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