Stealing Sunshine (Cherry Peak, #4)

by Hannah Cowan

“Your mother just wants you to have someone,” he explains. I lick my lips before letting my words out. “Tell her to expand her criteria, then. No more finance bros. I’d appreciate if she included a few pageant queens as well.” “Are they not just opposite sides of the same coin?” “Maybe. But at least she wouldn’t be blatantly making a show of which gender she’d prefer I wind up with,”

“I’m not pushy. I’m just sure of myself and what I’m offering. It will work, I’ll make sure of it. And once your mom grows to realize that you’re not interested in any of these men she keeps feeding you, we’ll call it off and go back to whatever we are now.” “Feeding me?” I ask, stuck on that one part of her statement. “I’m not a succubus.” “No? Could have fooled me.” “Now I’m the one getting offended.” She hits my arm with hers and laughs louder. Fuck, she has a pretty laugh. Like a wind chime blowing through a quiet, dull night. “Don’t be offended. Look at you, Bryce. You could eat men for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Late-night snack too,” she teases.

It sounds ridiculous, yet my heart is thrashing at the agreement. The crush I’ve had on Daisy Mitchell for the past three years should have made me turn this idea down and build a permanent wall between us. Instead, it’s encouraging me to go along with this.

Yesterday, I woke up single, and today, I have a girlfriend. A fake one, to be specific, which I guess I need to be when we’re not in private.

“Yellow,” she answers. “Really?” “Black would be too obvious.” I twist my lips to hide a smile. “I’ll admit that I thought it would be black.” “It’s been yellow for a while now.” “I’ll make a note of that. Can I ask another question?”

I glare at the black-and-white photo of my tits on the wall in front of me and inwardly curse my lack of shame. The moment I open my door, Daisy’s going to get an eyeful of my body whether she wants to or not. Talk about overstepping boundaries.

“You really don’t have to do this, Bryce. I wouldn’t even expect this of a real girlfriend, let alone a fake one.” “Is that a joke?” I ask, not a lick of humour in my tone. She keeps her lips flat and shakes her head. “If my girlfriend didn’t offer to help me when I needed it, I’d kick her ass to the curb. I’m interested to hear what you think is something a partner should do for you if this doesn’t count,” I say. She swallows loudly. “I’ve always felt guilty asking others to help with things that I know I can do myself.” My eyelid twitches when the tip of my finger touches a gob of gum before I slap my hand down on my pants, rubbing the sensation away. “You’ll need to cut that shit out.”

I’ve heard the term Rottweiler boyfriend before, but in this case, it’s Rottweiler girlfriend. While fierce enough to appear mean to those who don’t know her, she’s actually a giant squish ball that would roll over onto her back for some affection from those she trusts.

“I don’t think I have boundaries with you,”

She’s angry for me, appearing ready to march an army on my behalf, and we’ve only been roommates for a week. I haven’t done anything to earn her protection, but she’s given it to me anyway.

“I want Daisy Mitchell.”

“You’re plenty of things, Bryce Lemieux. Blunt, stubborn, crass, a connoisseur of vibrators and horror documentaries, but you’re absolutely not creepy. It pisses me off when you speak negatively about yourself.”

“You’re not wrong. Relationships are terrifying.

“You look beautiful, Frosty,” she says, a soft smile playing with her lips. My heartbeat is in my ears. “You too.”

“Yeah, I think the present is a pretty fucking good place to be right about now, Sunshine.”

There certainly weren’t new chalkboards hung for the kids to scribble on between lessons or multicoloured lounge chairs and a rainbow bookshelf in the corner of the room for reading and visiting. I know for a fact I hadn’t purchased a yellow, flower-shaped rug for beneath my desk either.

“This is just one of the many things I’d do for you, Daisy.” “Because it gives us something to use as proof?” I stroke the corner of her mouth with my thumb, aching to tug it up just so I could see her smile again. Poison slithers up my throat as my lie builds, leaving a sour taste behind. “Yeah, Sunshine. Just proof.”

“It’s not just you, Daisy. It’s only you. I’ve never brought anyone else here, and I don’t want to. I like it like this. With only us.” I do too.

“Are you upset with me because I’m gone late, Daisy?” I avoid eye contact, suddenly feeling small beneath the fierceness of her stare. “No. I just need to know if I should stop leaving the lights on once I’ve gone to bed.” “You won’t have to. I’ll be home earlier from now on.” “Don’t feel obligated. I’m a big girl.” “It’s not obligation. I forgot what it was like to have someone at home waiting for me,” she states, finally looking elsewhere.

“You have a beautiful home. I noticed a gazebo outside. Was that here when you bought the house?” she asks. “No, actually, I put it in a few years later. Bryce was always playing guitar outside when she was young and kept burning her scalp in the sun because she refused to wear a hat. It was my attempt to keep her out of the sun while still letting her be outside.”

It’s the best kiss I’ve ever had. Even if I am dreaming.

“If I wasn’t the one to pull away, I’d have kept you trapped in my bed with me for hours, kissing you until your lips were swollen and sore. I wasn’t reminding you that it was just practice. I was reminding myself because if for even one minute I let myself believe otherwise, this fake agreement would be done, and you’d be gone before I’d even had you for one real moment.”

“Is there a love language that specifies getting tattoos for your significant other? If there isn’t, there should be.”

“Love codes,” I repeat, testing the feeling of it on my tongue. “I think Daisy would love that.”

“I love Bryce Lemieux! I love her so much, and I don’t care what anyone thinks about that because I’m going to love her forever!”

“Love codes was Darren’s idea, but it’s . . . it’s us. I’ve always been able to express myself with art better than I ever could with words. And these tattoos, Sunshine, the one on your thigh and my ankle and now my arm, they’re my love language. I could ink your name into every inch of my skin and still try to make room to keep going,”

And while I wish we could go back and have that proper moment, I think what we got instead was more than worth the wait.”

The ice cube is small but detailed in the same way all of Shade’s designs are. Every crack and frozen detail is well placed, but it could be a fucking blank square for all I care. It’s the water dripping off the edges and the letters they’ve been designed to spell that has me lost for words. Bryce. The end of the e has been curled into a devil’s tail, and above the left corner of the B, two angel wings are spread wide.

“I don’t want to touch another woman, Daisy. Period. Just my woman. And before you ask, I haven’t wanted a man in three years. They may as well not exist.”

“Bringing sunshine to my life. I think I’ve stolen some of it along the way.”