The Summer Deal (Wildstone #5)(43)

Raina opened the front door and smiled at them. “This weekend I’m making another batch of enchiladas. I’ll expect both of you and your other two roommates as well.” She beamed. “And, Kinsey, bring your parents, too.”

Kinsey looked at Brynn.

Brynn shrugged.

Okay, so Kinsey was on her own with this. “That all sounds nice,” she said carefully. “But it’s just my mom and she’s usually busy, very busy.”

Raina brushed this off with a sound that said, Don’t be silly. “Who’s too busy to meet their daughter’s new roommate? Oh, and don’t worry about bringing anything, we’ve got it all covered.” She smiled. “I’m so excited to meet all of Brynn’s new peeps.”

“Brynn asked you not to say ‘peeps’ anymore,” Olive called out from the living room.

“She knows what I mean. Don’t you?” Raina asked Kinsey, looking at her with eyes that were far sharper than her easy smile let on.

She was definitely being summed up, and normally she wouldn’t give a single crap about what people thought of her. But she found herself nodding.

“So you’ll come?” Raina asked.

“Yes.”

“And bring everyone?”

“I’ll invite them,” Kinsey said. “Whether they come or not is up to them.”

“Tell them I make the world’s best enchiladas. Tell her, Brynn.”

Brynn smiled with love and affection, not even a little embarrassed that her mom was basically bribing Kinsey to be Brynn’s friend. “It’s true,” Brynn said. “You do make the world’s best enchiladas.”

Raina beamed. “Good girl.” And then the front door shut.

Kinsey looked at Brynn. “Wow.”

Brynn narrowed her gaze. “Wow what?”

Kinsey lifted her hands. “Nothing.”

They both stared at each other, and for the first time in a long time, Kinsey wanted something, and she wanted it bad too. She couldn’t have said why or how, but she wanted Brynn in her life, and hell, she also wanted her moms. “I’ll come if you do,” she said softly.

Brynn nodded. “Then we have a deal.”

It was what Kinsey had wanted, but . . . “That seemed too easy.”

“Trust issues much?”

Kinsey blew out a breath. “Just tell me. You’ve got a stipulation, I can feel it.”

“Actually, no. I don’t.”

“Everyone’s got a stipulation.”

“Fine,” Brynn said. “I get that your health issues are your own business, but if we’re going to really be friends, then you have to let me in a little. Tell me things.”

Like the fact that you’re my sister? “Such as . . . ?” she asked carefully.

“Such as, what’s the trick to getting the kids at school to love me as much as they do you?”

Kinsey felt herself go warm with the unexpected compliment. “You just have to be real.”

Brynn met her gaze. “You should try that with me sometime. When you do, I’ll know you meant it about being friends.”

Normally when people were snippy with Kinsey, she wrote them off. She was the only one allowed to be bitchy, because, hello, look at her damn life. But something weird happened with every prickly response Brynn gave. Kinsey’s tension lessoned. It was like Brynn was the perfect antidote. Dammit. “You’re a very strange woman.”

“Takes one to know one.”

Kinsey drove home, still a little stunned that she’d actually—hopefully—talked Brynn into coming back. Her sister was different from anyone she’d known, which left her feeling a little off-kilter and confused. She had no idea why, but she liked bickering with her. And laughing with her.

Oh, boy. Please don’t let it be that sister thing Eli had always told her was there. Because that would mean Eli was right about something, just like he almost always was.

But whatever was happening with her and Brynn, it felt . . . sibling-like. She’d seen it with Eli and Max. Yeah, they were brothers, but they were also more. They argued, they fought—hell, just two weeks ago Max had pushed Eli through the hallway wall. But they’d made up, laughed, and then had played a video game, all within a ten-minute span. Then Max had taped up a huge poster of the beach over the hole in the wall, the one Eli told him he had to fix before summer was over.

They were so annoying, and yet . . . and yet she wanted that. Desperately. And she wanted it with Brynn, even though she didn’t deserve it.





Chapter 14


From fourteen-year-old Kinsey’s summer camp journal: Dear Journal,

Do you know how sucky it is to find out your best friend got his first kiss before you did? Yeah. And of course Eli kissed Brynn, and he smiled for the rest of the night.

Annoying.

So I went after my own first kiss. His name is Jack and it took me almost all damn week to get his attention by completely ignoring him. But in the moment, I got sick and almost puked on his shoes.

I mean, I missed. But not by a lot, and he was really grossed out. Now he’s ignoring me.

I hate everything. I’d list it all out, but I’m too tired.

Also, I’m tossing you in the lake.

Good-bye, Journal.