Page 14 of Enchanted to Meet You

That stopped me completely. The closet suddenly felt about half the size it had a second ago. “What?”

“You heard me.”

I stared at him. The music thudded faintly through the wall behind me, and for a second it was the only thing I could actually process, because the sentence he’d just said clearly hadn’t landed the way real information was supposed to.

“Nobody’s going to open that door.”

“Great.” His mouth shifted, not to a full smile but something close to it that made my pulse speed up. “So you won’t mind agreeing to it, then.”

“That’s not—that logic doesn’t even hold up, that’s not how agreements⁠—“

“It holds up perfectly. Either nobody opens the door and it’s a non-issue, or somebody does, and two people who are apparently dating get caught doing something two people who are dating do. Either way, you walk out of here fine.” He tilted his head, watching me with a level of focus I didn’t know what to do with, the smugness gone now, replaced by something more careful.

“Absolutely not.”

“It’s not really up for debate.”

“Everything is up for debate. That’s the entire premise of a debate, and I am telling you right now that I am not kissing my brother’s rival in a closet.”

“You agreed to owing me a favor.”

“I agreed to owing you a vague, unspecified favor, I did not agree to kissing you in front of an entire party of people I have to see at school on Monday!”

He snorted. “Most of the people here go to Crofton and don’t even know who you are. And you promised to help me make my ex jealous—and guess what? She’s here.”

I looked around dramatically. “In this closet? Because I don’t see anybody but us in here.”

He didn’t rise to the bait. “I can promise you right now that she will end up over here and see us kiss.”

I opened my mouth to say no, not because I was totally opposed to being kissed but because this was Rhys freaking Montgomery and this was not happening, right up until the door handle behind him rattled, someone laughing on the other side, fumbling at the closet like they were hunting for a jacket or hiding from someone of their own, voices dropping into a conspiratorial whisper just outside.

Rhys’s eyes flicked toward the sound and back to me, steady, waiting, and I had just enough time to think he wouldn’t actually⁠—

He would, and he did.

His hand found my jaw first, tilting my face up with a gentleness that felt completely at odds with every single interaction we’d had up to that point, thumb resting just below my cheekbone like he had all the time in the world to get this right. He kissed me slowly, testing, like he was giving me one last second to pull back and prove him wrong about all of it. I didn’t. Whatever protest I’d been building dissolved somewhere between the first brush of his mouth and the second, replaced by something warmer and far more complicated than I had any interest in examining, his other hand settling at my waist and pulling me in just enough that there was no space left for the door, or the party, or the fact that I was fairly sure I still hated him.

The door swung open behind him.

Neither of us stopped.

five

The door bounced against the wall behind whoever had opened it, and for a solid two seconds—an eternity, in context—neither of us moved. Rhys’s hand was still curled at my waist, mine still fisted in the front of his shirt in a way I had absolutely no memory of deciding to do, and it took the sound of someone clearing their throat, loudly and with obvious relish, before either of us actually pulled apart.

We turned toward the rectangle of hallway light at the same time, both of us blinking against it like we’d been dragged out of a movie theater into the middle of the day.

“Oh my gosh,” Kelcey said, because of course it was her. Of all the people in this house who could have opened this exact door at this exact moment, the universe had picked her. One hand flew up to cover her mouth, though not fast enough to hide the wicked look already spreading underneath it. It was obvious that she hadn’t been expecting this closet to be empty, no matter how much she was pretending she did. I just wasn’t sure what she’d been hoping to find.

Beside her was a boy I vaguely recognized from the Crofton soccer team, who looked more surprised by the discovery but no less thrilled. He was tall and dark-haired, and he propped his shoulder against the doorframe with a casual posture as he smirked at us.

“Sorry,” Kelcey said, not remotely sorry. “We were looking for the bathroom.”

That was a weak excuse, since there was no reason they would be looking for it together, but I didn’t speak up.

“You practically live here, Kelcey,” Rhys said drily. “You know where the bathroom is.”

“Definitely not the bathroom,” the guy agreed amiably, eyes moving slowly from Rhys to me and back again, something calculating flickering behind the amusement. “Didn’t realize you were in here, man.”