Page 129 of Tripped By Love

She was staring at the screen, completely engrossed in Elizabeth Shue and Val Kilmer’s race from the Russian mafia through the sewers of Moscow. And all I’d been able to do was watch every single expression that crossed her face with my fists balled so hard that the nails had bitten into the skin so I wouldn’t touch her.

“It’s your favorite movie. You watched it half a dozen times that summer.”

I’d said more of the wrong things, because the smile that had been starting to form on her lips went away at the mention of that summer together. Truck and I had just moved out of the Victorian and into the cottage downtown when the termite damage at the B&B had sent everyone scurrying. Mandy and Leena had taken off to Eli’s place, but Jersey and Violet had moved in with Truck and me. The little two-bedroom, one-bath house had been so small we could barely stand with two people in the kitchen.

It was the place where Truck and Jersey had fallen in love. It was the place I’d avoided like the plague so a sixteen-year-old energy ball didn’t cause me to do more things I’d regret in my life.

Now, that sixteen-year-old was a twenty-one-year-old dynamo.

This wasn’t just a distraction.

This was a catastrophe.