moments, his chest heaving as he struggled to breathe.
“I want more of that mouth,” he murmured, bending to kiss the side of her jaw.
“I have to go home. I promised Chris I’d watch a movie with him.” Her voice was rusty. She licked her lips and he groaned again, putting some distance between them.
“Go on then. I’ll see you soon, Lily. We’re going to be friends once more, if I can’t have friends and then some.”
He’d have to be satisfied with that, she told herself as she drove home, because that’s all she had to give.
Chapter Six
Lily heard whispered talking and sat up in bed, listening hard.
Quickly, under cover of darkness she got some shoes on and pulled a robe over her pajamas.
It was Chris, on his phone.
She crept closer, not wanting to intrude, but damn it all, the boy had lied to her so often she wanted to be sure it wasn’t something she should worry about. And it was after midnight anyway.
“I can’t.” He paused. “No. Dude, she will totally hunt me down. No, not my mom. She’s so doped up half the time she wouldn’t even notice. Lily, my sister. Yes, yes the one who jumped the fence.”
Lily cringed at his words about their mother. Pamela had her good days, but she struggled through some bad ones too. It wasn’t right that Chris saw it enough to know what was happening.
“Are you fucking kidding me? No way. She’d hunt me down!”
One of her brows rose of its own accord as she listened to Chris arguing and wondered what it was over. Also, the F word? No. She wasn’t going to get worked up over a shit or damn here and there, but nuh uh no way.
“I gotta go. I’ll see you tomorrow. No, I have to go. The school calls Lily and she’ll find me.”
What he didn’t know was that she’d hooked him into her family phone network and could locate him that way. A friend in Macon kept track of her teenage daughter that way. If he cut school again she’d totally not only track him down, but drag him back to school by the scruff of his neck and not feel a damn bit bad.
He stood there under the moon until she made some noise and got his attention. “Why don’t you come up?” She pointed to her door, and he was about to argue but didn’t. “You want some hot chocolate? I got the kind with mini marshmallows.”
He nodded as he sat.
She fiddled around with the stove and got the milk heating before she turned her attention to him again. “Something you want to talk to me about?”
“What? Me? No.”
“Like say, why you’re outside at twelve thirty on a school night?”
“I needed some air. I didn’t leave the yard.”
“You’re not in trouble.” She brought out two mugs and got the cocoa ready for the hot milk. “I just thought you might want to share. I’m not entirely bad, you know. I might be able to help with whatever’s got you so wound up you need air so long after your bedtime.”
“I’m fine.”
She poured the milk and stirred, hoping she wasn’t messing the whole thing up.
Once she’d settled in at the table with him, she took a sip and forged ahead. “Mom’s sometimes a little influenced by her medication.”
He rolled his eyes. “She’s stoned. I’m not an idiot. I know what it looks like.”
Lily couldn’t argue. “And that makes you feel, what?”
“What are you a shrink now?”
“Nope. Just a girl whose mom is hurting like hell because her husband left her. A girl who sees her mother take too many pills just to make it through the day.”
He cut his gaze to her as he sipped the hot chocolate. “I suppose you’re going to say it’s okay for her to do it because she’s an adult.”
“No. I’m going to say I hate it. I think it sucks. I hate that she checks out, and I feel totally alone and helpless. I feel like I’m messing up with you. I resent it and I resent that Dad seems more interested in his teenage girlfriend than us.”
Chris blinked his eyes several times, clearly overcome with emotion. “Will she