Tiger Lily - May Dawson Page 0,27

my to-go cup in a salute. Blake as a boss might drive me insane, and Dylan was distractingly sexy, and Archer was so quiet that he left me babbling. I wasn’t sure I could handle working with the three of them.

Amber just winked.

Once again, I had to wonder what everyone else seemed to know when they looked at these guys and me.

14

Archer

“It’s karaoke night at Vee,” I told Lily, curious to see how she reacted, and her eyes lit up.

Then, just as quickly, those beautiful eyes shuttered. I wondered what the hell was going on.

The more time I spent with her, the more I saw what Blake meant about a kicked dog. She was still full of life and that sharp wit we all loved, but there was something going on—a cloud hanging over her, soaking up some of the sunshine she’d always radiated.

“Do you think someone put a curse on you?” I asked, as abruptly as the idea occurred to me.

She frowned, turning to face me. We stopped in front of Beastie Besties; I’d steered Lily across the street so we didn’t have to walk right past Black Moon Magick. Something about that place gave me the creeps.

“That doesn’t happen in the real world,” she said, gesturing with her cup for emphasis. “People don’t go around putting spells on each other anywhere but Silver Springs.”

Thankfully, none of her cocoa spilled out of her cup, no matter how much she talked with her hands. That unicorn hot cocoa was really delicious, even though I would’ve denied my love for it.

“Sometimes it happens by accident,” I said. “That’s why I recommended against the pumpkin spice latte.”

“I wondered why you were so scared of pumpkins.”

“I’m not scared of pumpkins!” I filled her in on the backstory of the pumpkin spiced lattes and Jewels Café, and her eyes widened.

She held her cup out at arm’s reach. “Do you think the unicorn hot cocoa is okay? Or am I going to…”

She trailed off, eying me, and I wondered what she was thinking. Heat seemed to crackle between us, and I studied her lips as they parted, her wide eyes as they grew heavy-lidded.

She yanked her gaze away hastily and cleared her throat, clutching her drink to her chest.

“For sure.” I took another sip of the berry-flavored chocolate, pretending I was just fine. Completely unaffected. Even though her gaze sweeping over my body and the hungry way she’d looked at me—just for a few seconds—left me suddenly hard.

“Things have felt weird lately,” she said carefully. “Do you know what I mean?”

I shook my head. The attraction between us might be weird for her, but it was what I’d felt since we were both gawky teenagers.

“Oh,” she said. “Okay.”

She flashed me a smile, that heartbreaking wide smile that transformed her face.

“Tell me what’s weird,” I pressed, but she just shook her head.

“Are you going to show me Vee’s?” she asked, and I had a feeling she was desperately changing the subject.

But I missed her voice, and the thought of her letting loose on stage and singing like I used to hear from her all the time…it made my heart beat faster.

“Let’s go,” I said. I would’ve offered her my arm, if she’d been any other girl, but I didn’t want to, well, make things weird.

But for me, things had felt weird—in a heart-fluttery way—since Lily and I were thirteen. I didn’t think that kind of weird was ever going away.

The bouncer stepped aside for us, and I led her from the sunny day outside into the pleasant darkness of Vee. Booths on each side had heavy red velvet privacy curtains, and as I imagined kissing Lily in there, my cock was suddenly painfully hard again. But I wanted us to have a good view of the stage, where two sisters were singing a duet—one more successfully than the other—so I pulled out a chair for her at one of the tables near the front.

We ordered drinks. With the karaoke, it was too loud to talk much except in between songs, but that was fine with me. I’ve never been a smooth one with words. Instead, I watched her rapturous, smiling face under the changing lights. Pink-tinged Lily. Yellow-tinged Lily. Green-tinged Lily. I adored them all.

I nudged her beneath the table, and she glanced at me.

“You should go sing,” I shouted over the music.

She scoffed at that. “You should go sing.”

“I’m tone deaf and a terrible singer,” I reminded her. “As you informed me during sixth grade