Page 87 of Forbidden Billionaires: Vol. 11

“Darn it,” I said. “How did we not think about the fact that the team was going to be busy playing the whole time? I’ve only gotten to check off one guy.”

“Definitely not August?”

“Definitely not. Twelve more to go.”

Some random guys started getting in our line again.

“Billy!” Sophie yelled, ignoring the line forming.

Billy turned his head again.

Sophie waved him over.

He snuck out of the huddle and ran over to us. “You guys, I’m kinda busy right now.”

“Just kiss Scarlett real quick,” Sophie said.

“I don’t have any cash on me,” he said.

“We’ll pay you $5 to plop one on her.”

Okay...this was mortifying.

“Wait, you’re paying for the kisses?” Billy laughed. “I’m not sure that’s how a kissing booth is supposed to work.”

“Well, the money is going to the football team,” Sophie said. “And you’re on the football team.”

“Right, but...”

“Just kiss her!”

“Yeah, sure. Whatever.” He turned to me.

I leaned forward. I really didn’t want my kiss thief to be Billy. He’d taken so many cheap shots on Jacob during that boxing match. But maybe he’d taken cheap shots because he...liked me?

He pressed his lips against mine.

Nope. It was all wrong. I quickly pulled back and breathed a sigh of relief.

“Billy!” Uncle Matt blew his whistle. “What the heck are you doing over there?”

“Gotta run,” Billy said and ran back over to the huddle.

“Can you send over Eli Jones?!” Sophie shouted, but Billy didn’t respond.

And then all the guys were running onto the field.

“Billy is definitely not the kiss thief,” I said. “And this isn’t going to work.”

“What are you talking about? You already narrowed it down to 11 guys.”

“But all 11 of the guys left are on the field. Maybe we can try to lure them over here during halftime? And shut it down in the meantime?”

“But we have a line,” Sophie whispered.

Yeah. We did. And I didn’t want to mouth kiss any of these random guys. “If you hadn’t chucked that chalk, we could have written that it was closed until halftime.”

“It’s fine,” Sophie said. “I’ll handle it.” She quickly made out with half a dozen guys.

Luckily most people were interested in the football game that had started.

Unluckily, most didn’t mean all . And guys kept wandering over the whole time.

Sophie was handling it like a champ. I kept glancing at the camera feed of the locker room, waiting for the mascot. But he was nowhere to be found. Wasn’t he usually out here by now?

Every now and then someone wanted a kiss from me. And my lips were tired of kissing scruffy cheeks. My kiss thief hadn’t had any scruff. At least, not that I could tell. But I’d also been kissing his lips.

“So who else is on the list?” Sophie asked.

“Um...let’s see.” I pulled it up on my phone. “August and Billy are out. So that leaves Eli Jones, Luis Rodriguez, Zach Fisher...”

Sophie grabbed my phone. “We gotta sort this alphabetically.” She tapped a few things on the screen. “Let’s see. Okay, Eli, Ezra, Henley, Jack, Leo, Luiz, Noah, Ryan, Sean, William, and Zach. Gah, I think they’re all in right now.”

I sighed. This kissing booth was not going the way I’d hoped.

And I’d missed the first touchdown of the game.

I loved sitting in the stands and cheering on Axel and Jacob.

And now I had Liam and RJ to root for too.

Why was I spending my Saturday at a kissing booth where I could only kiss underclassmen or guys not on the team? This was a disaster.

“Sophie, can we please just shut the booth down? It’s not working and my dad already gave us plenty of money to give to the team.”

“But look! Ryan is on the bench right now!”

He was indeed drinking water on the bench. He pushed his shaggy hair off his forehead as he watched the game.

“Go over and kiss him.”

What? “I can’t walk onto the field and make out with someone on the bench...” my voice trailed off as I watched Axel throw a perfect pass to Liam. “Go Axel!” I yelled.

Axel turned toward me. He usually smiled when he saw me in the stands. But he didn’t look very pleased right now. Maybe because they were losing by one touchdown.

I turned my attention to my little brother who’d just caught the pass.

“Go Liam!” I yelled at the top of my lungs.

I stood up and started clapping as Liam ran down the field.

But then I cringed when he got tackled from the side.

The whole crowd groaned at the same time.

But Liam stood back up to lots of cheers.

I breathed a sigh of relief. But my breath got caught in my throat when Sophie started yelling at Ryan on the bench.

“Ryan!” she yelled at the top of her lungs.

He’d put his helmet back on like he was about to go in, but instead of running onto the field, he turned his head to see us.

She waved him over.

He glanced at Uncle Matt. But Uncle Matt was busy yelling at a ref. Ryan shrugged, got up off the bench, and jogged over.

“What’s up?” he asked.

“We need you to kiss Scarlett real quick.”

Why was this so mortifying every time?

“I heard you were handing out free kisses.” He pulled off his helmet, leaned forward, and pressed his lips against mine. And I...wasn’t sure. Shit, how could I not be sure?

He started to pull back, but I grabbed the front of his jersey so he wouldn’t move. I needed more if I was going to be able to tell if he was the kiss thief.

I didn’t feel the same butterflies I did when I kissed my kiss thief. But was that because I wasn’t in a dark room? Or was it because he wasn’t the kiss thief? Or because I didn’t have a crush on Ryan? His tongue darted across my lips and I parted my lips for him.

Ryan groaned into my mouth.

At first I thought it was because he was really into it, but then he pulled back and cursed. He picked a football up off the ground next to him as the ref blew the whistle.

“What kind of pass was that?” Sophie asked. “Is Axel high right now?”

I stared at the ball in Ryan’s hand. Yeah, that had been a seriously bad pass.

“Ryan!” Uncle Matt yelled. “Get your ass back on the field!”

“Later,” Ryan said as he ran back into the game.

“I seriously think Axel is high,” Sophie said as she turned to me. “But how was the kiss?”

“It was good. But not kiss thief good.”

“Noted.” She looked back down at the list. “Okay, next up is...”

“Go Jacob!” I yelled. I hadn’t been paying much attention to the game. But it seemed like Axel was handing it off to Jacob again. Because Jacob had just tied the game with a touchdown.

Jacob smiled over at me as he spun the ball on the ground.

“You two are adorable,” Sophie said. “And I hope Axel keeps handing it off after throwing it way out of bounds on his last toss. He hit Ryan right in the arm.”

“I didn’t realize the ball had hit him.”

“Yeah. But he was so into that kiss that he barely even cared.”

I shook my head, but I couldn’t wipe the smile from my face. Kissing hot footballers was actually more fun than I’d been anticipating. Each kiss seemed better than the last. I’d gone from no kisses at the beginning of the school year to being a kissing expert. “So who’s next?”

“Eli Jones, but he’s in. We need a defender. Oh! Perfect. Henley!” Sophie yelled.

Henley turned around from where he was sitting on the bench.

He was holding a champagne flute full of water.

Mr. Nigel was the waterboy. And he always did it wrong.

It was kind of a problem because there was always broken glass on the field.

But Mr. Nigel was probably more entertaining than the missing mascot.

He was a friend of the family and one of the silliest people I knew.

“Flea flicker! Flea flicker!” Mr. Nigel yelled, even though he wasn’t supposed to be calling any plays.

I laughed.

Sophie beckoned Henley over.

Henley left his champagne flute and helmet on the bench as he jogged over.

“What’s up?” he asked. He was definitely the tallest of the guys I’d kissed so far. And he looked very strong. I pictured my kiss thief holding me in place as he kissed me. Henley was definitely a possibility.

“We’re trying to see who the best kisser on the team is,” Sophie said. “And you’re up.”

“Is that so?” He started to lean in toward her.

Sophie slid to the left and pulled me into her place. “Scarlett’s the judge.”

And Henley didn’t seem to care. He was just about to place his lips against mine when a football collided with one of the posts holding up the canopy over the kissing booth.

The ref blew his whistle and I saw Uncle Matt throw his clipboard.

But I was too distracted to pay much attention to the game. Because the wooden pole split in two, splintering everywhere as the canopy fell. And then there was a huge boom and the balloons started popping.

“Ah!” Sophie yelled and stepped back. She grabbed my arm to pull me back too.

We both ducked as another boom echoed through the stadium, sending wood in every direction.

I put my hands over my head. “What the heck is happening?!” I yelled as two more explosions went off.

“Axel is clearly high!” Sophie yelled back. “Who throws a pass that far out of bounds?!”

I didn’t care about Axel’s aim. I cared about how on earth our kissing booth had just exploded!

People started yelling in the stands but it didn’t look like anyone had gotten hit with flying wood. And Henley was unharmed and already running back to the field.

Along with the mascot.

Damn it! When had the mascot gotten here?!

I quickly got up and stamped down on some cloth that was on fire on the ground. The kissing booth looked like it had been in a warzone. “Sophie,” I said and stared at the carnage.

She sighed. “I was really hoping that wouldn’t happen.”

“What?”

“The only cameras I had in a pinch were the V21s. We had so much extra inventory because of the explosions.”

“Why would you bring exploding cameras to a football game?!”

“How was I supposed to know that Axel would be high and throwing like crap?”

My dad came running over. “Are you girls okay? What happened?”

“We’re fine, Uncle James,” Sophie said as she brushed some ash off her skirt. “Just a normal old kissing booth incident. It could have happened to anyone.”

My dad gave her a weird look. “It exploded.”

“Partially.” She grabbed the money. “But we raised a ton of money. Anywho...”

“Why did it explode?” my dad asked.

“I think technically half of all kissing booths explode at some point,” Sophie replied.

“Did it have anything to do with a certain camera line that has been discontinued? That your father swore he destroyed all the inventory of?”

“What? Psh. No. And even if it had been, no one got hurt. So you don’t have to worry about being sued or anything.”

“I wasn’t worried about being sued until about three seconds ago. Did you or did you not put V21 cameras up in the kissing booth?”

“Uncle James.”

“Sophie.”

“I would never. That would be a danger to society. And all the V21s have definitely been destroyed.”

It seemed like she’d held back the word “now” at the end of that sentence. At least, I hoped the cameras were all destroyed now.

The two of them went back and forth.

Which gave me time to rewind the footage of the locker room.

I saw the mascot walking out and kept rewinding.

For a second I thought he’d just walked into the locker room fully decked out in the costume.

But then he took off his big Eagle head.

Well, technically he was putting it on but I was watching in reverse.

And none of that mattered. What mattered was who was wearing the costume.

No.

Freaking.

Way.