Page 101

Still recovering from my encounter with Blair, I’m fairly certain the sight that greets me when I walk downstairs the next morning takes a full five years off my life.

Blair is sitting in my parents’ kitchen.

With my parents.

Eating pancakes.

My brain can’t process it. All the elements are familiar, but the picture they create has just short-circuited me.

He’s wearing khaki shorts and a short-sleeved white button-up and looking so completelynormalthat I freeze in the doorway.

“Good morning,” mom says cheerfully when she sees me standing there. “You forgot to mention you had a guest stopping by.”

“D-did I?” I stutter. “Huh. How stupid of me. Blair? Would you mind joining me outside?”

He nods, takes one last sip of his juice—orange juice. Blair drinks orange juice, my still-sparking synapses note—and turns to my mom with a wide smile as he stands up.

“Thanks for breakfast, Mrs. Byrne. It was delicious.”

My mom returns his smile and giggles, actually giggles—which, first of all, gross; and, second of all, traitor—and my dad glances over the top of the newspaper he’s reading, squinting at me from the other side of his glasses.

“Everything alright, carrot top?”

“Just fine, dad,” I say, ignoring the huff of a laugh Blair lets out and wishing like hell a sinkhole would open up and just swallow me whole at this point.

Striding across the kitchen, I put my hand on Blair’s elbow and steer him toward the door. He comes without a fight, though not before mom pipes up behind us.

“Feed the chickens while you’re out there, would you?”

“Sure mom!” I call out, trying to tamp down the edge of hysteria in my voice as Blair and I exit out the side door into the yard. I don’t stop dragging him forward until we’re next to the coop, out of earshot of the house, and my anger is reaching its boiling point.

“What the actual hell do you think you’re—”

I don’t get the rest of the question out before Blair wraps his arms around me and pulls me into a bone-crunching hug. My cheek is smashed up against his chest, and he cradles my head in one big hand until I’m pressed close enough to hear the wild beating of his heart.

“I wanted to do this yesterday,” he murmurs into my hair. “But I figured you’d probably be less mad about it if I wasn’t naked.”

I’m supposed to be mad about it, aren’t I?

But… fuck, it feels good. Being back here. Where I belong.

No, I make myself remember, not where I belong. Not anymore.

Pushing away, I plant my hands on my hips and scowl up at him. I open my mouth to start berating him again, but he interrupts me by picking up the metal coffee can on top of the container where my parents keep the chicken feed.

“Wouldn’t want the chickens to go hungry,” he says, holding it out to me.

Scowl deepening, I take the can and open the feed box.

“I can feed them and chew you out at the same time.”

“Oh,” he says, watching me aggressively dip the can in and fill it up with feed. “I’m sure you can.”

Walking over to the little fenced area outside the coop, I start sprinkling it inside and glare at him.

“I’ll ask you again. What the hell are you doing here?”

The question doesn’t phase him for a moment. “You said you didn’t care what I did, so I figured it was alright to stop by.”