I batted his chest with the back of my hand. "Be nice to yourself. You're not a complete asshole."
He wrapped his arms around me, his hands on my ass. "Before I met you, I was an incomplete asshole." He pressed a light kiss to my forehead. "But if you tell anyone I said that, I'll deny it. Connor Ferguson doesn't do sweet."
"My lips are sealed." I mimed zipping them shut and throwing away the key.
"All this talk about sweetness makes me want ice cream," Riley said. He draped his spare arm around my shoulders and embraced us in a group hug, including the massive teddy bear.
"I can't believe I'm hugging a plushie," Connor muttered. The top of the bear was practically in his face.
"You say that like it's the first time ever," Riley teased.
"It's not the first time. The last time, I was five," Connor told him.
"I remember," Riley said. "You had that plush moose. You used to carry him everywhere."
"And you had a plush unicorn, for some reason." Connor smirked.
"Because some of us believed in magic," Riley said with a shrug.
"You don't anymore?" I couldn't remember the last time I believed in magic, so I was in no position to judge.
"I didn't think I did, but then I met you." He kissed my mouth before dropping his arm and handing me back the teddy bear.
"If you keep saying things like that, you won't need ice cream," Connor said.
"I still need ice cream," Riley said. "Let's go before they sell out." He took my hand and led me back toward the food trucks.
I followed behind, but kept an eye out for Brooks. Or someone who looked like him.
The guy I saw might have had a striking resemblance, nothing more. But I knew that wasn't true. I'd seen recognition on his face, even at a distance. It was definitely him. Why had he run like that? Why not stick around to find out why I was here too?
The sooner he turned up, the sooner I'd get those answers.
If he turned up.
"He'll turn up," Connor said, as if reading my mind. We stood close together, waiting in line for ice cream. "This place is too small to hide for long. If he tries, Riley and I know all the good hiding places."
"And the bad ones too," Riley said. "A couple of the huts further up the mountain are dangerous. As in, about to fall down, or in places where they'd be destroyed by rock slides or avalanches. Not the fun kind of dangerous."
"Sounds like the perfect place for him," Connor said darkly.
"I don't disagree, but I want to know why he's in Aurora Hollow before he meets some nasty, sticky end," I said.
In spite of our differences, I didn't want Brooks to die. We'd only known each other a handful of years. For a while there, I thought, perhaps naïvely, that we could be friends. That was before our parents started pitting him against me. Things soured all too quickly after that.
Once in a while, I wondered what would have happened if we hadn't let them do that to us.
"If you say sticky end again, we're going to skip the ice cream," Connor whispered.
"Oh yeah?" I asked over my shoulder.
"Mmmhmm." He pushed my hair aside and kissed the side of my neck.
A shiver of heat went through my body, down to my core. "You make a compelling argument."
"Of course I do," he murmured against my skin. Grabbing my hand and Riley's, he tugged us out of line. "Come on, I know a place."
He pulled us across the park, and down toward the lake. About halfway between them, he pushed us into a stand of trees. The space between the trunks was enveloped in darkness. A pocket of shadows in the middle of the light, noise and festivities.
