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No, a lot.
He’d never been kissed the way Tia kissed him. With spark and challenge and boldness that he’d never gotten from...
She Who Must Not Be Named. Although that wasn’t fair. Juliet deserved a place in his heart. Just not first place. Or even second place. Not anymore.
A door slammed, echoing through the church. Then footsteps—please, please be Tia—returning to him.
“Everything okay?” North opened the door, stuck his head in. “I saw Tia bolt out of here.”
“Fine,” Doyle said. “You here to relieve me?”
“Ham asked me to guard this room. Not sure why?—”
“Lock the door behind me,” Doyle said and took off into the sanctuary.
The night had swallowed her up, and he took off across the monastery courtyard, but he didn’t see her.
Could be she’d gone... to talk to Rosa?
He stood in the yard, the rain hard upon him, staring up at her room.
Knock on her door.
The impulse thumped inside him.
Fix this.
“Doyle?”
The voice jarred him out of his panic—yep,that was the name for the thundering of his heart, the clogging of his throat—and he turned to see Austen, wearing a rain slicker, coming out of the dining hall. “Declan and I are headed back to his place. You good?”
Doyle hadn’t put his hood back up, so water trickled from his hair, around his ears, into the neck of his jacket, down his back, chilly. His entire body buzzed, exhaustion a relentless master, and he sighed.
“I called Tia... Juliet.”
He didn’t know why he said that, but Austen... she would understand.
“Aw, Doyle.” She stepped up to him. Touched his arm. “She’ll understand.”
He tightened his mouth, gave a grim shake of his head. “I don’t...”
She raised an eyebrow.
“I had just kissed her.”
“Bro.”
He held up a hand. “Never mind. Any word from Stein?”
“No. My guess is that he’s helping out somewhere. But you—listen. Are you falling for Tia?”
He looked back to her room on the second floor, then to Austen.
“It’s me, little bro. I covered for you that time you snuck out in eighth grade to go stargazing with Juliet on the dock.”
“It was ten o’clock at night, and I think Mom and Dad saw us.”
“Shouldn’t have sneaked out your second-story window, then. Still, I didn’t rat you out. Nor did I tell anyone how you curled up with a bottle of chilled chardonnay down in Key West one night.”