Murder_ A Sinful Secrets Romance - Ella James Page 0,186

way he’s holding it. The whole thing makes me giddy.

Rett and Barrett talk for a long while about duck hunting, which culminates in plans to go sometime in January. By the time we leave, I’m wine drunk and Barrett is laughing his ass off because he hardly drank at all. It’s started to drizzle, so he carries me to his Jeep and when he plops me down in the passenger’s seat, I wrap my arms around his neck and kiss him until I’m dizzy.

“You’re a funny drunk, Pig.”

I smash my palm against his nose. “Am not.” But I’m giggling.

“You are,” he says with conviction. I feel his lips tickle my forehead. Then his arms are locked around my shoulders. He’s pulling me against him. Silence throbs around us.

“God—I fucking love you, Gwenna.”

“I love you.” I love his smell, the feel of him… I’m smiling as he slides into the driver’s seat. He takes my hand.

I feel him doing something with it. I look down. There’s something heavy…

“Merry Christmas, Piglet.”

I hold my arm up to my face and see three thin bracelets. They’re smooth and dark. I sit up and flip the visor down. They sparkle.

“Oh my God. Did you—” They’re bangle bracelets made of polished wood, and in the center of each bracelet is a line of tiny diamonds. My eyes fly to his. “You made these.”

“Yeah.” He smiles. His fingers touch the bracelets. “From a tree along our property line. Don’t worry, it had fallen.”

I giggle. “Like me.”

He frowns.

“For you.”

I throw myself at him, end up falling on the console in between our seats, and then fall victim to a minor bout of hysterical laughing.

“Barrett,” I gasp. I start howling.

I can feel him laughing, too, his chest bumping into mine as his low chuckles fill the car.

“I’m sorry,” I cackle. “I love them so much. And you.”

By the time I pull out of his lap, I have to wipe tears from my eyes. The tears pick up steam again as I look at the bracelets. “God, they’re perfect. Thank you, Bear.”

I wipe my face, but that just seems to make the tears flow faster. Then I’m crying in my hands. I don’t know why.

“No… Piglet.” Barrett’s leaning over to me now, his hands on my shoulders. “Hey… It’s Christmas, and you’re Santa, right? Striptease Santa doesn’t cry on Christmas.”

I laugh, still crying.

“You’re a sad one. A sad drunk,” he murmurs, wiping my tears with his fingers.

I nod.

“Better than a mad one, baby. Better than a mad one.”

I settle eventually, and Barrett runs back into my mom’s house and gets some water for me. I look at the bracelets, winking like a bunch of little guiding lights.

And that’s when I realize: I am a mad one. I’m a mad drunk, and I’m mad sober. Because I love Barrett, so much. I love him, but I can’t move on. I can’t write a new story with Bear because I’m missing a huge chapter of my old one.

NINETEEN

GWENNA

January 1, 2012

1:11 a.m.

I press my fingertip against the clock that sits on Jamie’s bathroom counter. Isn’t that what we used to do when we were kids? See a row of the same digit on the clock, and you got to make a wish. What is my wish, I wonder, as I sink my nose into the thick gray scarf.

It smells like man.

Not cologne, how Elvie smells, but male. Like…pheromones. And how pathetic am I, standing in Jamie’s bathroom, sniffing some dude I don’t even know.

I sigh, a sound that echoes. Which kind of makes me laugh. I’m still smiling as I dial Elvie.

For reasons I can’t fully explain, I left the theater room, where Nic and Jamie were starting Forrest Gump, and went to my room to call Elvie. But I had to pee, and my bathroom didn’t have toilet paper, so I came in here to—

Oh yeah. I need to use the restroom.

I sit down as the phone rings, and then stand as I realize there’s no TP here, either.

I frown at myself in the mirror as the phone rings once…twice…three times before I’m answered by a male laugh.

“Elvie.”

He laughs again. My lips move into a reciprocating grin, until I hear him say, “Stop, babe.”

“What?”

He laughs again, and it’s his slow laugh. It’s his drunk laugh. “Sorry, babe.” He hisses, “Just a second.”

My pulse spikes, despite the alcohol still in my bloodstream. “Are you talking to somebody else?”

“Gwen? I can’t hear you.”

“I can hear you.” And the other two hundred people in the