The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue (Montague Siblings, #1)

by Mackenzi Lee

In truth, I am thinking how this tousle-haired, bit-off-his-guard, morning-after Percy is my absolute favorite Percy.

I reach down and touch his lips with my ring finger. I think about winking as well, which is, admittedly, a tad excessive, but I’ve always been of the mind that subtlety is a waste of time. Fortune favors the flirtatious. And by now, if Percy doesn’t know how I feel, it’s his own damn fault for being thick.

Rather, it is simply the tale of how two people can be important to each other their whole lives, and then, one morning, quite without meaning to, one of them wakes to find that importance has been magnified into a sudden and intense desire to put his tongue in the other’s mouth. A long, slow slide, then a sudden impact.

A small shift in the gravity between us and suddenly all my stars are out of alignment, planets knocked from their orbits, and I’m left stumbling, without map or heading, through the bewildering territory of being in love with your best friend.

If the whole of England were sinking into the sea and I had the only boat with a seat for a single person more, I’d save Percy. And if he’d already drowned, I probably wouldn’t save anyone.

When we strike a rough patch and he nearly loses his footing, I seize the chance to grab him by the hand and haul him upright again. I have become a veritable scholar in seemingly innocent ploys to get his skin against mine.

I am reminded of how exquisitely easy friendship with Percy is, equal parts comfortable silence and never lacking things to say to each other. Or rather it was easy, until I ruined it by losing my bleeding mind every time he does that thing where he tips his head to the side when he smiles.

“This isn’t about us.” “It’s always going to be about us.”

“Where is it you come from?” “England,” I reply. “We’re touring.” “You seem to be running.” “Well, that’s what we’re currently doing, but we were once touring.”

Love may be a grand thing, but goddamn if it doesn’t take up more than its fair share of space inside a man.

There’s not a thing on God’s green earth that has the power to disarm me quite like two inches of Percy’s skin.

When he speaks again, his tone is nearer to reverence, a voice for saints and sacred places. “Go on, you must know by now.”

I’m desperate not to let all my stupid hope fill the silence between us but it’s filtering in anyway, like water running through the canyons that longing has spent years carving.