“It’s magic hidden coffee.”
She sips.
And she chokes. “Oh my god, you weren’t kidding about the socks. Are you sure there’s nothing poisonous in here?”
“I’m a scientist at heart. You can trust me.”
“What is that?”
“Warm cinnamon kombucha, actually.”
“No.”
“Yep.”
“I knew it wasn’t coffee.”
“Gold star again.”
“I can’t believe you like this stuff but you don’t like coffee.”
“People are weird. Here. Last one.”
She eyes the final mug, this one blue with foam that’s probably too high.
“It’s actually coffee. With milk.” I push it closer to her.
She picks it up and sniffs.
Then sniffs deeper.
I lean closer. The snow has melted out of her curls and her cheeks are still pink, likely from the cold. Whatever shampoo she used is mingling with the scents of coffee and chai, and I want to kiss her.
Again.
That’s all I want to do. Kiss her. Touch her. Strip her. Bury my hands in her curls and inhale the scent of her. Lick her. Eat her. Take her.
Her eyes drift closed while she sniffs the coffee once more, and I want to be the mug when she puts it to her lips.
She sips, and then a soft mmm floats through the air.
If I wasn’t already hard, that mmm would’ve done me in.
Check that.
I’m now over-hard and it hurts.
Still wouldn’t trade this pain.
“Wow.” She licks the foam off her upper lip. “That’s actually good.”
“Thank you.”
Her gaze snaps to mine.
Don’t think it’s the ego in the thank you either.
I think it was the huskiness in my voice.
I’m leaning so far over the counter that it wouldn’t be a stretch to kiss her lips.
Snow’s swirling outside. No cars going by. No one in the surrounding shops.
I could do it.
I could kiss her and no one would know. No one but the two of us.
“You made this yourself?” she asks.
“Me, that cappuccino machine, and YouTube. I had faith in YouTube and myself. It was the machine that was the wild card.”
She doesn’t smile at my joke.
“Sabrina—”
“You don’t want to do this,” she says quietly.
“Do what?”
“Flirt with me.”
“Flirting with you has been the highlight of my year.”
“And it’s going nowhere.”
“Why?”
“Are you serious right now? Why? Because there’s this big elephant called my café standing between us. Because I’m a gossip. Because you can’t trust me. I am playing dirty. Before the end of this weekend, you’re going to hate me.”
“It’s oddly reassuring to hear someone say you can’t trust me out loud.”
“That is not a normal thing to say.”
“Villains always say you can trust me. The fact that you doubt yourself speaks highly to the likelihood that you’re not a serial killer or a narcissist. Want me to pull up a few research articles? Bet you another sip of the bad coffee that I can find six in under a minute that’ll prove me right.”
She stares at me over the good coffee. “It is such a good thing that we’re never going to come to an agreement on Bean & Nugget.”
My gut twists.
It’s not something I can control. It’s not something I want. But it’s something I feel to the very pit of my being.
I don’t want to hurt Sabrina, but I cannot tolerate the thought that one more person has manipulated me and won.
She’s watching me like she knows everything I’m feeling.
Maybe she does.
Maybe that’s part of why she’s such a good gossip. She knows what will hurt the most.
“What did Chandler do to you?”
Maybe I’m feeling extra mellow today, or maybe it’s the false security that comes with thinking we’re snowed in here together, but answering the question is easier than I thought it would be. “My junior year of college, he arrived on campus and made friends with my apartment mate. Would’ve been fine, but he also decided his favorite new hobby was tormenting me.”
She cringes. “That is unfortunately believable.”
“I could handle it—wasn’t any worse than I dealt with in high school or sometimes from my siblings—but he ultimately set my research on fire and tried to pin it on me.”
“He set your bees on fire?”
Shouldn’t be a surprise that she’s done her research. It’s Sabrina. Of course she has. “Six beehives wiped out. Ten years’ worth of genetic bee work for one of the professors. Chandler used my passcode to get into the lab, so it looked bad. I was able to convince them I hadn’t done it, but the trust was broken, and they wouldn’t let me back into the lab unsupervised. I had to switch schools.”
“We didn’t hear about that back here.”
“Shocking.”
“And I’m sorry he did that to you.”
Her apology makes me tense in a way that her questions didn’t. “Wasn’t your fault.”
“We used to excuse his behavior as part of his big personality. We shouldn’t have done that.”
“Did you learn something from it?”
She grimaces. “Just a little bit.”
“Good. Remember it.”
She sips the coffee again, a small smile coming to her lips as she licks the foam away again. “This is good. You should consider running a café.”
“I make an even better kombucha latte.”
Her entire expression twists in disgust and makes me laugh.
Laughing with her makes me want to kiss her again.
“I like you, and I don’t like people,” I hear myself say.
“I like you, and I don’t do relationships.”
“Why?”
“Because I come from a long line of women who didn’t sleep with the men everyone thought they did and it’s given me trust issues.”
My lips part. “You don’t trust your mom?”
“My grandmother was an amazing woman. My mom is an amazing woman. I trust them implicitly. But both got completely and totally screwed by the men who got them pregnant. I don’t trust men to do the right thing.”
Of all the things I expected her to say, this was not it.
“My grandfather isn’t my grandfather.” She’s watching me while she talks, like she’ll find out more about herself based on however I react. “Not biologically. I’m not actually a Sullivan. I’m not supposed to know that—very, very few people know it, actually—but I do, and it’s one of the reasons I will adore my grandfather until the end of time. He stepped up and married my grandma and took care of her and raised my mom as his own, making both of their lives more comfortable than they would’ve been otherwise, even if it wasn’t a grand love story. More like a mutual respect story. Everyone thinks my big genetic secret is who my father is. Not who my grandfather is.”
“Do you know your father?”
“I know who he is. That’s more than enough.”
“So…you’re not telling me we’re secretly related?”
Her eyes flare wide, and then she tips her head back and laughs. “If you’re this funny come next Monday, I might actually agree to go on a date with you.”
“If I’m this funny next Monday, I might have better options.”
She snorts so hard she has to wipe her nose. “Oh god. Tell me you didn’t see that.”
“You’re human. Horrors. Good thing I’ll have better options on Monday.”
Her peal of laughter lights up my entire soul.
I don’t just want to kiss her.
I have to kiss her.
“Sabrina—”
“Aroof!”
“Aaaahhh-CCCHHHHHOOOOOOOOO!”
The dog’s bark is fine.
But the sneeze startles me enough that I jump.
Because that wasn’t Sabrina.
That came from the kitchen.
She’s already shifting off her stool. “Are you kidding me?” she yells. “It’s four in the freaking morning.”
“Four-thirty,” comes a male voice I don’t recognize from someone who definitely shouldn’t be in the kitchen. “Em’s up and wants a cinnamon latte but won’t ask for it. Laney says to surprise her. I want a lemon scone.”
I follow Sabrina into the kitchen and find a man with shaggy brown hair and tattoos all down his arms squatting at Jitter’s doggy house, rubbing his shoulders and taking doggy kisses all over the face.
Jealousy rears up and I’m barking, “Who the hell are you?” before I realize what’s going on.
The guy flips a look over his shoulder and grins at me, and fuck.