#Scandal by Sarah Ockler Read Free Book Online Page B

dust!
    “Sorry,” he says. “Trying to set your phone alarm. John gave me his keys—we’ll head out at nine.” The air cools when he lifts the sheets, mattress moaning under his weight. He flops around for a minute, finds the right spot. The sheet falls back into place, tickling my arm as it lands softly between us.
    Music and laughter filter through the floor from the living room below, and on the dresser, my phone buzzes with a text, then another. Ellie. I squeeze my eyes shut and try to slow my breathing, convince them both I’m already asleep.
    “Luce? You okay?” Cole whispers.
    The bed is small—only a twin—and he’s shirtless and there’s hardly any space. I’ve never shared a bed with a boy before—just friends or otherwise—and now my skin involuntarily seeks his warmth, his touch. In the narrow gap between us, I feel Ellie’s presence, watching us with tears on her cheeks, holding out for an explanation that just doesn’t exist.
    58

    I inch closer to the wall without answering his question.
    “We’ll take off first thing.” He leans over and kisses my shoulder, lips warm through the Bears love people! shirt, and Ellie vanishes. “Everything’ll be better in the morning.” The bed creaks as he settles back onto his side. I focus on emptying my head. Counting sheep. Ten. A hundred.
    Drifting.
    Somewhere far, far away . . .
    “Lucy?” His fingers trail through the ends of my hair and I shiver. He finds a stray bobby pin, drops it to the floor.
    Ping!
    It’s impossible to hold on to my resolve; like my fairy godmother wishes, I feel it floating away, breath by breath.
    Sheep. Count the sheep, Lucy. One, two, three . . .
    The bed moans again. Cole rolls toward me.
    “For the record,” he whispers, “if you ever got sick, I would totally hold your hair back.”
    59

    THE MURDEROUS LIT Tll E HARLOT
    All SO KNOWN AS MY SIST ER
    A re we okay?” Cole asks when we pull into my driveway the next morning.
    It was a groggy thirty-minute drive, and now Cole’s looking at me through heavy-lidded eyes, hair rumpled and adorable, and for a heartbeat I imagine us waking up together in his bed, smiling instead of shamed, lingering in postprom bliss instead of making small talk about the trashed cabin. Spence the horse-napper and Prince Freckles were already gone, but the rest of the place was still full of the drunk and the damned, everything smelling suspiciously equine.
    Cole smiles before I respond, and all I can think is, I should be looking at that smile over pancakes and coffee. . . .
    60

    “No.” I blink away the fantasy. “I mean yes. Call when you find my cell? I forgot my license and stuff in your tux, too. Oh, and I couldn’t find my earrings. And I left some hairpins in your bathroom.”
    I basically forgot everything that wasn’t attached to my body, all in my haste to disappear before Griff woke up.
    I’m pretty sure she was wasted last night—too drunk to remember our run-in—but there’s no way she would’ve just sent me out the door in Cole’s clothes this morning, all bed-headed and guilty-looking. Not without the grand inquisition.
    “Hairpins?” Cole says.
    “I’m dead if Mom finds out I lost them. The earrings, not the pins. The cell, too.”
    “Should I call you on the missing phone?” he asks.
    “Stop trying to make me laugh.”
    “Never,” he whispers. The familiar mischief is back in his eyes, and I allow myself a smile. “Lucy . . .” Cole taps his fingers on the steering wheel, and my smile vanishes again, a ghost in the morning sun. “I don’t know what to do, either, okay? It’s not like I don’t care about Ellie. I don’t want to hurt her. It’s just . . . it’s over. What happened with us . . .” He sighs, his gaze tracking a robin in the grass before finding its way back to me. “We’ll figure something out. We’ll go to her house and—”
    61

    “I have to do it,” I say. “Alone. I want her to hear it from me.” Even if she lied