The Bossy Prince (Rugged and Royal #3) - Lili Valente Page 0,82

the porch. “And guess what else we could do while we’re there?”

“What?” I ask, lifting a hand to hover in front of my lips.

“Why are you covering your mouth?”

“Because I have dragon breath.”

“You don’t,” he says, leaning closer. “You insisted on brushing your teeth at the airport before we boarded.”

I wince. “Should I be troubled by how little I remember about the journey to the airport and pretty much everything after?”

“Do you get blackout-drunk often?”

I shake my head. “Never. Well, almost never. There was that one time after the Fast Grass festival. Remember that weekend? When we fell asleep in what we thought was an empty field watching the stars come out and woke up to cars parked all around us.”

He laughs. “We’re lucky we weren’t killed.”

“Seriously. I’m never getting blackout-drunk again.”

“I support this plan,” he says, his fingers wrapping lightly around my wrist. “We don’t even have to drink in Vegas if you don’t want to. Now put your hand down.”

“No.” I resist the pressure as he tries to draw my fingers away from my lips. “Why?”

“So I can kiss you while you’re sober and remind you why we decided this was the best idea we’ve ever had.”

My eyeballs impersonate cliff divers again as I shake my head.

“Yes,” he insists, lids drooping to half-mast as he shoots me a look I’m sure has singed the panties off many a groupie and supermodel. “Let me kiss you, Kirby. If you don’t like it, I promise I’ll stop.”

“That’s not what I’m worried about,” I mutter.

“What are you worried about? Don’t be worried.”

“Breath. Bad breath,” I lie, even though I’m pretty sure Colin is right, and my breath is just fine. But I can’t very well tell him that the thought of kissing him while sober is terrifying to me. I can’t let Colin in on the secret I’ve been keeping since the night of the vampire snowmen, the night we walked alone through the snow and it felt like we were the only two people left on earth.

Kissing him is the first step on a road that ends with my complete and utter mortification. And probably the end of our friendship, which would be even worse.

I need Colin in my life. As crazy as it sounds, this bad-boy rock star is the only adult I can count on when shit gets real. My mom is a hot mess who I haven’t talked to since I was seventeen, my sister is a sweetheart, but far too anxious to turn to in times of trial, and my other friends—almost all of them artists of one kind or another—are even more socially awkward than I am. Gigi doesn’t leave the house except on Sunday afternoons, when she goes to buy more paint, Nisha is physically incapable of making plans in advance or showing up anywhere on time, and Lars is so afraid to drive he has to have his boyfriend chauffer him everywhere. Theo, my surrogate little sister and Bridget’s bestie, is the only semi-normal person in our group, and she talks so much she makes my ears bleed if I’m not careful to limit my exposure.

Colin is my safe place, the one person with whom I can let down my guard, and be my real, unfiltered self. He’s the only one who knows why I’m so weird around loud noises and people who yell in public places. People who yell, period. Peter witnessed a Mortifying Meltdown a couple of times, but I refused to talk about the why of it all, even with the guy I’d been dating for almost two years.

Only Colin knows about my mom and how bad it was when I was really little, before I grew up enough to take care of myself and Bridget. Only he knows about the shit show in the courtroom when I became emancipated and actually got guardianship of my sister at seventeen because our mom was that much of a nightmare. He was there. He held my hand while we waited for the judge to make her decision, and he hugged me after when I cried so hard with relief it felt like I was turning inside out.

If I lost him…

I can’t even think about it.

I nod again, more emphatically. “It’s bad. The breath. I can tell.”

“Okay, okay,” Colin says, in a tone that makes it clear he thinks I’m full of it. “Then I won’t kiss you on the lips.”

Before I can say a word, he disappears under the blanket, and my