Fool Me Twice (6 page)

He squints up at me. “I think I hurt my eyes because your hair looks weird. Like a shimmery rainbow.”

Instinctively, I dart a hand up to my hair to see if it’s sticking up or jacked all over or something, but my ponytail feels normal.

“He’s being totally weird,” Bailey whispers as we back away from him.

I follow her to the entry, and we stop. “He just landed on his head at twenty miles an hour. He’s lucky the steer didn’t step on him.”

“Hon,” he calls.

Bailey crosses her arms and shoots him a glare. “Why does he keep calling you pet names?”

“How should I know?” I whisper-shout. “He thought Twister was still alive, and that he was in the same cabin as last summer!”

“Ew, I’m having total flashbacks,” she says, grimacing.

“Huh?” I ask, rubbing my temples, like
I’m
the one who fell off a speeding horse.

“Of last …” Her eyes fly open and she gasps. “Ohmygod, ohmygod,” she says, shoving me. “Go ask him what year it is.”

“What? No! Why?” I don’t like the look on her face. The one of total glee that spells trouble in every way.

“This is totally like a movie or something! Like
The Vow!”

“What?” I ask. “This is not a movie!”

“Then go ask him and prove me wrong! He totally has amnesia! He thinks this is last year and you’re together and that’s why he keeps playing touch tag!”

My eyes flare wider and I glance back and forth between her and him, to where he’s got an arm slung over his eyes.

“He probably just forgot about the bull being culled and he
wishes
we were together, so he’s taking this opportunity to become a groper.”

“But he thought he lived in cabin six, like he did last summer.”

My mouth goes dry. “That doesn’t mean anything.”

“Prove it,” she says, staring me down. “Go ask him what the date is.”

“That’s such a random question!”

“Then ask him how old he is! If he says eighteen, he’s fine, and I’m wrong.” Her grin tells me she expects to be right.

I glare at her. “Fine.” I stomp across the room, then poke him in the arm.

“Ouch,” he says.

“We have to ask you some questions, to, like, make sure you’re okay,” I say, cringing at how insipid I sound. “That’s what Dr. … I mean that’s what that guy said. To be sure you weren’t, like, confused or something.”

“All right.” He pulls his arm off his face, squinting up at me.

“Where are you right now?” I ask.

“Serenity Ranch. I didn’t hit my head
that hard
.”

“I know, this is just a test. Next question. Um, how old are you?”

“Seventeen,” he says.

Behind me, Bailey shrieks.

Chapter Eight

Outside Landon’s cabin, Bailey paces so fast she looks like she might explode out of her skin. Her adorable leather flats are kicking up a mini-dustbowl as she chatters on. “So he thinks he’s seventeen, which means he thinks it’s actually
last
summer and you two are still together, and
oh my God.”

The last words she practically shouts and I cringe.
“Shhh!”
I say, glancing over my shoulder and back into the cabin. “He’s brain damaged, not deaf!”

She lowers her voice, leaning in closer, her body quivering with excitement. “You don’t get it. Now you can totally screw him.”

“Ohmygod, Bailey!” I say, grabbing her shoulders and shaking her lightly. “I’m not going to have sex with him!”

“Not screw him.” She laughs in a way that makes me feel dumb, and then pulls my hands off of her shoulders. “Screw
with
him. This is perfect!” She’s glowing, bouncing, totally overjoyed that my ex-boyfriend got hit upside the head. Naturally.

I run a hand over my face, failing to follow her line of thinking. “And how, exactly, is his brain getting scrambled a good thing?”

“He thinks you’re still together, so just … go along with it.”

I drop my hand and shoot her an incredulous look, but she’s too busy beaming with pride to notice. “Go along with it,” I repeat.

“Yes. Let him believe it. Mack, just think about it,” she says, her voice serious now. “I saw you fall apart last year.” Her expression softens. “I did your hair that morning and I helped you find that god-awful T-shirt, and I was there when you walked in. I saw how crushed you were when you caught him kissing Natalie, and you know you didn’t deserve it.”

“Yeah, but I still don’t see what you want me to do.”

“Go along with the little romance that seems to still exist in his head, but this time manipulate him. We’ll do some research, figure out everything he loves and hates, and you’ll be his perfect girl. He’ll fall head over heels for you. Then, when you get tired of the game,
bam!”
I jerk back when she slams her fist into her palm.

My jaw drops. It’s … totally shady. And maybe a tiny, teeny bit tempting. For once, the player would become the played, and he’d know what it’s like. He listened as I told him I loved him, and he kissed me back, and that whole time he wanted Natalie. He dropped me in a humiliating, earth-shattering, confidence-shaking kind of way.

Her words ring in my ears.

“I couldn’t do that,” I say, but it’s a weak protest at best. I
could
do that. He hurt me so much that the urge to do it right back is overwhelming.

“Think of it like community service—he’ll probably do what he did to you to a dozen girls. He’ll break their hearts. You could make him realize how much it sucks to be hurt by the person you love, thus saving a bazillion hearts from breaking.” She nods, totally convinced that this qualifies as charity work. “And, I mean, you get revenge to boot.”

“But I can’t,” I say again.

“You
can
and you
will
,” she says, her eyes boring into mine. “It’s not like you have to drag it out all summer or anything. Just a few weeks, until you’ve had your fill of pulling his strings, then you dump him.”

“A few weeks,” I say, letting the idea settle in. “But what if everything goes fine for a week or two and then he just … remembers everything?”

“Contingency plan, Mack. While you’re fake dating him, we can screw around with him. Play some pranks to liven things up. No matter what, you win.”

I chew on my lip.

“Seriously, you’re way too hung up on him. This will be good for you, cleanse your palate. It’s one of those what-goes-around-comes-around things, or whatever metaphor should probably apply here,” she says, waving her hand in a vaguely circular manner.

I swallow. “So … I pretend we’re together, like really? Because that means I gotta do it all.” I frown. “I mean, he’s kinda touchy-feely, you know? I’m going to have to kiss him. Probably make out with him.”

She gives me the Look. “Well, play a
little
hard to get,” she says, like she can’t trust me. “He seems into that.”

“Okay,” I find myself saying, realizing she’d convinced me three minutes ago. All of this was really just a ruse, because how could I resist the idea of breaking the heart of the guy who’d crushed mine?

“Really?” She grabs my hand and squeezes it in hers. “This is going to be so totally epic!”

“Yeah. Let’s do it.”

Chapter Nine

When my cell phone beeps at one a.m., I slide out of bed, still fully clothed in navy-blue sweats, turned down at the waist, and a faded WSU T-shirt, rubbing my eyes as I creep out of my bedroom door for the third time tonight. Bailey tried to get me to wear something sexier to bed, going as far as offering me her silk “shorts” (do they count as shorts if my butt literally hangs out of them?) and matching cream tank top, but I refused. I don’t care that Landon will see me eight or nine times before the night is through. If I’m gonna lose this much sleep, I have to at least be comfortable.

I mean, the first time it seemed kind of fun, slinking around the ranch at night, but now I just want to go to bed. But
noooo
, I’m out here making sure Landon’s not bleeding in the head or something.

I click on a flashlight as I slip my feet into worn-out slippers,
pushing through the screen door and holding it so that it doesn’t slap shut and wake up Bailey. At least one of us should get decent sleep.

I walk the paths, enjoying the silence of the ranch at this time of night. Even the rowdiest of the guests have retired to their private cabins. A few of the cabins, perched high atop the hill, still glow with light. But down here, with the workers who will all be getting up early to muck stalls and trim lawns and serve breakfast, it’s dead silent, save the occasional hum of the crickets, a song that won’t die until dawn.

I swing the beam around in front of me, following it toward the back pathways leading to Landon’s cabin. I walk through the shadows between cabins 8 and 9, until I’m standing on his porch.

I rest my hand on the doorknob, lost somewhere between anticipation and annoyance, before pushing it in, and then I step into the relative darkness of what is his home for the next couple of months. It’s always such a surreal thought that the three of us, all teenagers, live on our own for the summer.

I wonder how it will feel to be truly independent. When this summer is over and Bailey and I go away to college, at opposite ends of the state, I hope it’s not the last time we ever room together. I hope we finish our degrees and then find each other again, room together in a house or apartment somewhere awesome.

I click the flashlight off as I enter his cabin, navigating via the faint yellow light from a nearby lamp. Even though this is my third trip to his place tonight, I move slowly, paranoid I’m going to trip on a sneaker or something. Just as I’m about to step into his bedroom, something nearby beeps, and I turn to see his phone on the side table, lit up.

Frowning, I walk over and read
low battery
. I’m about to turn back to his room when something clicks.

The date. My heart twists for a second, until I realize the year isn’t present, just the month and day. Whew.

Clearly Bailey and I need to spend some time thinking through all the ways Landon could uncover our ploy. I guess it’s good that none of us brings a computer to the ranch and there aren’t really any calendars hanging around the cabins or the stables.

His bedroom door is open, so I turn back to the task at hand and creep in, feeling like an intruder.

A few days ago we’d hardly spoken in months, and now here I am in his cabin in the middle of the night. The snide comment I made to him about the roller coaster doesn’t seem so out of place now.

I step through the door and let my eyes adjust to the darkness until I can see the outline of his body underneath the sheets. At some point he’d kicked off the blankets—probably because it’s too hot to use them—and stripped off his shirt. The sheets wrap around him, dipping lower near his belly button.

My mouth goes dry and I swallow, glancing around nervously like someone will catch me staring.

Bad Mackenzie
, I think, but still I take one more moment to appreciate the view before walking over to his bed and poking him—hard—with the flashlight.

Without opening his eyes, he reaches over and grabs my wrist, his fingers encircling it in a tight grip. I freeze, the flashlight still in my hand. “You know this would be easier if you just stayed,” he says, eyes still closed.

Stayed?
No way.

“For you or me?” I ask, feigning flippancy. Hahaha, he wants me to stay over. When he’s half-dressed and it’s the middle of the night and we’re alone. That’s hilarious. So totally hilarious. I’m laughing. On the inside.

“You,” he says, and it comes out as a breathy whisper. I know it must be because he’s not totally awake, that he’s groggy right now, but I feel light-headed, off-kilter. “Climb in,” he says, and my heart rate spikes all over again.
Climb into his bed?
“Set the alarm. If I slap it off, I’m coherent and you don’t have to move. If I don’t, I’m brain-dead so you should poke me with that flash-light again.”

The air must have been sucked out of the room. Maybe if he had a roommate, or some kind of reason for him to keep his hands off me, but he doesn’t. Most of the workers’ cabins are really small, and people get to bunk alone. Bailey and I scored one of the bigger ones since we volunteered to room together.

“Glad to see the fall hasn’t affected your game,” I say, hoping he can’t hear the way my heart has galloped to life in my chest.

“I won’t touch you, I promise,” he grumbles into his pillow. “I can’t even think straight with this headache.”

I slide my phone out of my pocket and hit the button on the side, then blink against the bright light to see the time. Businesslike. That’s what I should go for right now. “Do you want some more Tylenol? It’s been four hours.”

“Yes
,” he says, holding out his hand.

“Okay, be right back.” I step away quickly and stride to his kitchen, feeling like I can breathe again once we’re farther apart. Holy heck, I forgot how irresistible he is. No, wait, maybe I didn’t forget that. Maybe that’s why I’ve been stuck on him so long.
Maybe that’s the whole reason I’m standing in the middle of his freaking cabin at two a.m.

I shake two pills out of the bottle and grab a glass of water, then return to his bed. He’s sitting up, so the sheet covers his lap but none of his upper body, and I thrust the water at him so fast it sloshes over the edge and drips onto his sheets. He raises a brow, but his gaze is kind of lazy, and he’s clearly not alert.

“Uh, here,” I add.

He accepts the pills and pops them into his mouth, then downs half the glass of water before thunking it on the nightstand and falling back into bed. He turns onto his side, so that I can see the contour of his back and shoulder muscles.

He’s killing me and he doesn’t even know it
.

“I set the alarm for three,” he says. “You staying?”

Am I staying?
Why does he act like it’s no big deal?

“Uh, yeah,” I say, after a heartbeat too long. “On the couch.”