“I THINK this might be the best idea I’ve ever had,” Pippa muses, squeezing icing onto a cupcake.
I dip my finger into a bowl of orange frosting. “It might go down as one of my favorite birthdays,” I agree before popping my finger in my mouth and licking the icing off.
Pippa looks up and glares at me. “Get away from the icing! If you eat too much of it I won’t have enough to finish icing your cupcakes.”
I raise my eyebrows at her, my eyes roaming over the various different bowls of icing lining the island. “Something tells me you have enough, Pip.”
The door is pushed open, Cade bounding through. He wears a Jennings Ranch T-shirt that fits him way too well. I swear each summer he gets more and more toned, only fueling the intense crush I’ve had on him for years.
“Enough of what?” he asks, coming to a stop next to me.
I point to the countless bowls of icing. “Pippa got mad at me for taste testing the icing. She’s worried she doesn’t have enough.”
He laughs, fixing the hat on his head. He gives his sister a look. “You definitely have enough to go around.” He looks at the orange bowl I’d just dipped my finger in. “I want a taste.”
Pippa pins him with one of her Pippa Stares. I think it’s meant to be terrifying, but Cade and I have received it too many times over the years for it to be intimidating. “Cade. Don’t even think about dipping your muddy finger into my icing.” Her words are leveled and full of venom, but her eyes stay trained on the intricate piping details she’s adding to my cupcake.
Cade looks at me, a mischievous gleam to his eyes. It’s like him and I are on the same wavelength.
‘I promise I won’t dip my finger in the icing,” he promises, doing a mock salute. “But Goldie didn’t make any promises.”
His eyes go dark. Pippa’s curses go completely unnoticed as Cade takes me by surprise. He wraps his fingers around my wrist and guides my hand into the tub of icing. He forces me to scoop the icing onto my fingertip before he brings the icing to his mouth. My finger is enveloped in Cade’s warm mouth. His tongue runs along my skin as his cheeks hollow out.
Our eyes stay locked together. This kitchen feels way too hot, despite the open windows letting in the cool, mountain breeze. I attempt to slip my finger out of his mouth, my skin now void of any leftover icing, but he stops me. His front teeth dig into my skin as he keeps me trapped in this moment with him.
His tongue circles the finger before he lets me pull it out. I’m hot and bothered, hormones running rampant through me. He only fuels the burning desire I have for him when his face breaks out in a wide smile—something unusual for him. “The icing is delicious.”
He winks at me and I think I fall in love with him all over again. If Pippa wasn’t in the room, I might do something stupid like kiss him.
Pippa groans, tossing her piping bag to the counter. “Ew, Cade, stop looking at my best friend like that!”
The smile disappears as quickly as it came, but I have it burned in my mind to remember forever. There’s still the glint of humor in his eyes as he walks to the sink and uses the back of his hand to turn on the sink.
“Tell me, Pip, how was I looking at Goldie?”
Pippa begins to carefully place the cupcakes she’d iced in a white box. “Like you wanted to eat her or something. I don’t know. Don’t let it happen again.”
Cade’s eyes find mine for a fraction of a second. He shrugs, acting nonchalant. “Had to have a taste for myself.”
Using the same finger that’s covered in his saliva, I take another swipe of icing and pop it into my mouth. “And what’d you think?” I ask.
His words are said to Pippa, but his eyes stay locked on me. “I think that’s your best batch yet, Pip.”
I feel his words everywhere. I tell myself there’s a hidden meaning in it. The thought is confirmed when his gaze lingers on me longer than necessary.
“I tried out a new recipe,” Pippa announces, wiping her hands on her neon pink apron, completely unaware of the moment happening between her brother and me.
Which is probably for the best. She made her feelings clear on how Cade was looking at me.
At least she saw it too.
At least I know my mind wasn’t playing tricks on me.
I’d stupidly wished that things would change between Cade and me three years ago on my sixteenth birthday. I’d been so confident that something would happen between the two of us after that night.
Nothing ever did.
But something seems different this summer. He doesn’t seem afraid to look at me a little longer. To find ways to talk to me alone.
I’m wondering—hoping—that maybe Cade is finally coming to terms with the inevitable.
There’s something between us.
I’ve known about it since my sixteenth birthday. I’ve just been waiting for him to play catch up.
He didn’t on my sixteenth, seventeenth, or eighteenth birthday. But today is my nineteenth birthday, and maybe this one will be the one that really changes things.
Or maybe it won’t.
Pippa and I are off to college in the fall. This summer kind of feels like the last summer for me to find out if everything with Cade is all in my head or not. It’s another year under my belt and the last year I’m silently holding out for him. I’m about to be in a big city where I’ll be around a bunch of guys who won’t make me guess where we stand. This is the last summer for anything to happen.
During the day, Cade and I seem like friends that maybe look at each other a little too long.
But at night, when life seems to get a little too hard, it seems like there’s no way Cade and I could ever just be friends. He holds me too tightly, caresses me too tenderly for there not to be something more.
Pippa bumps her hip against mine. “Mare,” she sing-songs, dragging my name out into two syllables instead of one. “Why aren’t you listening to me?”
I plaster on a fake smile and look up from the bowl of icing. “Sorry. I spaced out for a moment. What’s up?”
Pippa narrows her dark eyebrows at me. “Did you lie to me?”
I take the cupcake she hands to me. It’s always been a rule that I get to eat what she calls her reject cupcakes. “What do you mean?”
Cade opens the fridge on the other side of the kitchen. I try not to stare too long as he pulls out a water bottle and eavesdrops on our conversation.
“Were you up past midnight to celebrate your birthday? I would’ve hung out with you.”
I chew on my lip as I avoid looking at Cade again.
I’m a terrible friend. Pippa had offered to stay up and help celebrate my birthday the moment it turned midnight, but I’d told her I was tired.
“No. I went to bed,” I lie. I’d gone out to the barn, hoping Cade would be there waiting for me like he had the years before. Both my seventeenth and eighteenth birthday we’d gone out to the clearing just the two of us. I’d blown out a stupid candle lighter and it’d felt like the best gift in the world. But we never told Pippa that. It was our secret. I liked having a secret with Cade, something that was just shared between him and me.
Cade wasn’t there last night.
I’d come up with a million excuses as to why he wasn’t there, but it still hurt. We’d never talked about going out for a ride for my birthday, but it seemed like a tradition after the years before. Like an unspoken rule. It seemed obvious that he’d be there waiting for me.
He wasn’t.
It broke my heart a little.
But my heart only stayed broken for a moment. When I woke up to him waiting at my bedroom door hours later, an apologetic look on his face for missing it, I had to forgive him.
He slept all night in my bed, the first time he’d ever been in mine instead of me being in his. We’ve never kissed, it’s always been very PG, but PG has never felt so right.
Now that we’re going on an overnight camping trip with our friends to celebrate my birthday, I think this is the time to change things.
I might be brave enough to confront Cade about what’s happening between us. I can’t guess any longer.
“Do you think you need a nap before leaving?” Pippa looks at the clock on the stove. We’ve still got about two hours before we need to head out.
I nod, a nap sounding amazing. Once Cade had slid underneath my covers, I hadn’t slept very well. I didn’t want to sleep and waste committing him in my bed to memory. I wanted to be awake in his arms, to feel his breaths against my back.
I’m paying for it today. A nap would help me rest and get ready for my birthday celebration.
Because my birthday wish is the same as it’s been since my sixteenth birthday. I want him. But this year, I’m going to take matters into my own hands.
Tonight will be the night I kiss Cade Jennings.
