Page 85 of Riding the Sugar High

“Good morning.”

“G-good morning,” she sputters.

“If you don’t get a move on, there’ll be some pretty fucked up chickens pecking at the door soon enough.”

Uncomfortably wrapping an arm around her, she mumbles, “Uh, I’m not coming today.”

My brows furrow.

What’s wrong? She’s...not herself. Her back is all hunched, like she’d rather be anywhere else but here. And why can she barely stand to look at me?

“Why not?”

“I’ll just stay in and work on my recipes.” She glances at my face, and her eyes, usually a warm blue, are as cold as ice. “You know, time is of the essence.”

Yesterday, she said she needed some missing ingredients. Why is she lying to me?

My lips part as the painfully obvious answer strikes me like lightning.

She’snotinto me. She’s rejecting me.

“What if Josie comes over?” I ask.

As her brows rise, and she stalls with a hum, I have the confirmation I need.

They say the worst thing that can happen is that she says no, right?

Wrong.

The worst thing that can happen is that she smiles. That she flirts back, that she looks at you as if she’s begging for a kiss. That you fall asleep thinking you’ll wake up to some gorgeous woman flirting with you during your car ride to work. Instead, you find out she was just high. Or trying to be polite. Or, what do I know, maybe she changed her mind. The point—though she hasn’t flat-out said it—is that Primrose isn’t interested. She wouldn’t be blowing me off for no apparent reason if she were.

I can’tbelieveI told her she’s my type. That I had the goddamn audacity to talk about how every time I see her around the house, I lose any sense of self-control. That I nearly kissed her—probably would have if she hadn’t been so high.

I told her I’m attracted to her, and now she can’t even look at me.

“I’ll just...uh, pretend no one’s home.”

Eyes harshly staring into hers, I remain silent for a few seconds. “Got it.”

My heart is thumping hard against my chest, and with a shake of my head, I walk past her. But then I realize, though I can’t unsay what I confessed to her last night, if Simon and Kyle find out she rejected the crap out of me, I’ll never hear the end of it.

“Primrose?”

She turns around.

“Can I ask you...could we keep last night between us?”

Her expression darkens, but after a long pause, she nods. “Sure, no worries.”

We stare at each other, and there’s so much I want to tell her. That she’s the first person I felt this attracted to in...god, in so long. That she made me think she was into me too. That she has every right to change her mind, but she hurt me.

But it doesn’t matter, does it?

It’s my fault, not hers.

I should have never let her in.

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