Chapter 6

chapter

six

Summer

Where'd he say the bathroom was?

I move through the kitchen and hit the dark hallway, but did Carter say it was the first door on the right or the left? I can't find a light switch, so I fumble around in the dark until I find where I'm going.

My head is all over the place, and I can't even pay attention to simple instructions.

I manage to not pee in a broom closet and eventually find the right door.

The bathroom looks like a bridal suite, with a small sitting room furnished with a gilded pink sofa. There's Renaissance art on the walls, marble floors, and a lush rug that no sane person would ever use in a restroom. In front of the sofa is a huge tufted pink ottoman decorated with an opulent mirrored tray of crystal butterflies and a bougie $200 candle, a candle that I once drooled over in Neiman Marcus. Procrastinating the need to pee, I grab the candle's lid and hold it to my nose. Fucking Fabulous. Literally, that's its name. I'm so out of my depth in this house and never want to leave.

I seriously consider stuffing the candle in my handbag. No. That would be all kinds of wrong. Quickly I use the toilet, wash my hands, and freshen up my lip gloss and hair in the gilded mirror.

Now, to find Harmony. If Carter is drawing up a contract right now, she needs to be there, too.

I leave the bathroom in the dark and slam straight into a wall. But it's not a wall at all—it's Carter.

"Oh my gosh, sorry!"

"It's okay," he says reassuringly. It's dark, but I can hear the smile in his voice.

He sounds a little different. Bolder.

"Sorry I got huffy with you earlier."

"You didn't."

"You have a certain way of expressing yourself and I'm not used to it."

"Okay…"

"I don't know if you could tell, but I almost kissed you again."

"You did?"

Carter sounds genuinely surprised.

"Yeah, and I wanted you to know it's okay if you're shy. You don't have to kiss me. back."

"Noted," he says. "I'll be sure to tell?—"

I roll up on my tiptoes and softly kiss Carter's lips.

They're warm but strangely stiff.

They also feel wrong.

Very, very wrong.

Carter places his hands on my shoulders and pulls me off of him, and our lips part in a loud smack.

Someone flicks on the hallway light.

"What's happening?" I breathe, forlorn that this kiss went so sideways.

The eyes that gaze down at me in shock are not Carter's.

Carter is, in fact, standing at the end of the hall, with his hand on the light switch.

"Carter?" I ask.

Carter's face is a mix of shock, hurt, and confusion.

I look back at the man I just kissed, and finally notice the things I didn't register in the dark a moment ago: the eyebrows, the shape of his nose. The slightly different haircut. It's Cooper.

I just kissed Cooper.

And I think Carter saw me.

Oh. My. God. I'm an idiot.

"Summer, what's going on?" My sister has entered the hallway, and now everything somehow turned even worse.

I spin around, and Harmony stands at the other end of the hallway, looking like I just punched her in the gut.