Page 68 of What's in a Kiss?

“Sounds like a pretty judgmental kid,” I say. “Maybe they should take a look in the mirror at the back of their car seat now and then.”

Jake laughs, but I feel an enormous weight settle over me. I’m not staying in this life, but this version of Jake—this tender, open, dazzler of a man—isstaying here.

And I’m not sure he’s thinking big enough.

I decide that for as long as I’m stuck here in the High Life, Iwill do some good. I want to help Jake get what he deserves. Maybe notEverything’s Jake, but some version of it—a career where he’s celebrated for his charms, for his preternatural gift of connecting with people, of connecting them with one another. A vehicle that gets his gorgeous face and soul on camera, like they were meant to be.

The world I come from is partly powered by Jake Glasswell—by moments where he made someone’s day brighter, someone’s long-lost friend pick up the phone, someone’s fiancée sayyes, so many someones’ lives a better place. And I’m going to bring it to the High Life.

“Hey, Liv,” Jake says, startling me from my schemes.

“Huh?”

“Truth or dare?”

Oh great.

There’s no way I’ll get a truth right, so I say the dreaded “Dare.”

Jake settles back in his chair with a smile. He presses something on his phone, and Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On” begins to play.

“Dare you to give me a lap dance.”

I know I need to keep a safe physical distance between Jake’s body and my own. But when he looks at me like that, his green eyes on fire—for me—I find myself slowly rising from my chair.

“Don’t miss the chorus,” he says as Marvin winds down the first verse of the song.

I step toward him, half clad in my silk robe, laughing andfizzing with a nervous thrill. I stand with my legs on either side of his. He runs a hand up my thigh and I shiver.

Okay, fine, I want this man. I want all the sex there is from him. And I’m terrified, because he loves me, and to sleep with him feels like it would be cheating on the woman he believes he’s married to. So I shouldn’t. But I also don’t know if I can stop myself, because goddamn, when I sit down he almost catapults me across the canyon. There’s practically no way to adjust in his lap without coming.

He grabs my neck and pulls me close until we’re just about to kiss, and this isit. The moment when I’ll finally know what it was like, that bolt of lightning that changed our lives, the vital flashing root of everything.

My phone comes to life somewhere nearby. The ringtone is “Tossing and Turning” by the Ivy League.

Jake exhales a groan and says, “Let it go to voicemail—”

But I take this interruption as a sign and leap up. I find the phone in my crumpled sweatpants. I look at the contact photo on the screen.

Ivy. On a unicycle. Apparently at Burning Man.

“I have to take this,” I say and run to the far side of the pool.

“Ivy,” I say into the phone. “Did you match the plates?”

“Are you on a run? You sound really out of breath.”

“No. I’m fine, I just... never mind. What’d you find? Who is he?”

“The car is registered to a T. Lennox of Eugene, Oregon—”

“Roger that,” I say. So Yogi Rabbi Dan’s real name is T. Lennox. I’ll find him. I’ll make him take me home.

I look back at Jake, at the beautiful garden on our deck, and I can’t help feeling pride at our accomplishment. I can see that Jake’s proud too, his bare feet tapping to Marvin as he surveys the job.

“Olivia?” Ivy’s voice comes through the phone.

“What! Yes?”