Heartbreaker - Julie Kriss Page 0,21

a V at the top of her cleavage. The way her cleavage looked even more considerable than it had in high school, if that was possible. I had been a big fan of Mina Maple’s cleavage at eighteen, though I’d never told her that. I was still a big fan of it now. In fact, in moments of boredom like this one, my favorite thing was to fantasize about it in serious detail.

My phone buzzed in the back pocket of my uniform pants, and I lowered the hose to take it out and look. As if she were psychic, Mina had texted me. Where are you right now? Are you saving someone’s life?

Not exactly, I wrote.

She wrote: So what do you do when you’re not saving lives?

I’ll show you, I wrote back.

I propped my phone on a nearby folding table, set the camera timer, and walked back to the ambulance, spraying it with the hose. When the photo app clicked, I walked back to my phone and texted her the picture.

That’s what I’m doing right now, I wrote. Total excitement. Your turn.

There was a long moment when she didn’t answer. I wondered if I had said something wrong, but then she finally sent a reply.

Mine isn’t quite as sexy as yours, she wrote.

I blinked, then grinned to myself. So she thought it was sexy, huh? I could deal with that.

Show me, I wrote.

There was another pause, and then a photo came through. It was Mina and a young girl who was in her early teens. They were at some kind of a workout—both of them had their hair tied back and their cheeks were flushed. Their arms were flung around each other’s shoulders and they looked like they were trying not to laugh. Mina was wearing an off-the-shoulder tee with some kind of strappy bra beneath it, and she had no makeup on.

I stared at the photo for a long minute, looking at her flushed skin, her natural confidence, and feeling a crazy rush of lust. Mina had always done this to me, especially when she had no idea she was doing it.

Before I could write anything, she wrote me a text. That’s Tess. She’s staying with my neighbor, who is her sister. We went to dance class.

That was nice, but in this moment I couldn’t really see the other person in the photo. I wrote: I disagree with your assessment. You’re very sexy.

There was a pause. I had gone too far, maybe—she was still mad at me for fucking up ten years ago, but I had to be honest. What I wanted was for her to be sweaty and flushed, just like in the photo, but because we’d just spent the entire night having the kind of mind-blowing sex she thought only existed in romance novels.

Dream on, Holden, I told myself. Dream on.

Finally, Mina texted back. You’re not supposed to take all of the drugs, Holden. You’re supposed to give them to patients.

So she was parrying with a joke, then. Fair enough. If I was going to get any kind of shot, I would have to work for it.

Was that what I wanted? A shot with Mina?

Yes, it was. The question was, how did I get it? I wouldn’t have a shot as soon as she knew the entire story about prom night. She’d want nothing to do with me after that. I was already drawing out my telling of the story as an excuse to see her again, but I couldn’t in good conscience try and get her into bed until she knew the whole truth.

Damn it.

Taking up her joking tone, I returned, Fine, I’ll cool off by turning the hose on myself.

Take pictures, Mina wrote.

Sure.

But take your shirt off first.

Now she was the one being flirty. No. I’ve decided to play hard to get, I wrote. And then, when the alarm on my work phone went off: We’ve got a call. Gotta go.

I turned off the hose as Grim came out into the garage, hefting duffel bags of medical supplies. “Let’s go, Prom Date,” he said, using the nickname he and Eric had started using on me. Sometimes it was a pain in the ass to live and work with people who knew too much about you.

I opened the driver’s door and got in. “You know,” I said as Grim got in the passenger side, “someday I’m going to find out about something embarrassing that you did and beat you over the head with it.”

“No you won’t,