Bonham (Pushing Daisies Book 3) by Heather Young-Nichols (the little red hen read aloud txt) 📗

left. I knew since this was basically the first time she hadn’t been in the room, that this was when I’d hear from my family.

“I like her,” Daisy said first. “I haven’t talked to her much so far, but I like her.”

“Me too.” Lexi and Daisy high-fived across the table.

“Of course you two would like her.” This was Daltrey. “You just want more chicks on the tour.”

“Who said anything about going on the tour?” I asked. Not a chance we were there yet.

“Oh, please.” Van rolled his eyes. “The way you look at her… It’s worse than with Kaitlyn Hanson freshman year.”

Fuck. I’d been head-over-heels for Kaitlyn. She was the first girl I’d had sex with and it had been love, as far as I’d been concerned. At fifteen years old, I was pretty sure that anyone who’d let me touch their tits would’ve earned my love.

“Shut the fuck up.” I shook my head, but maybe he wasn’t wrong. Sometimes Van knew shit about me before I did.

“I’m ready.” Her sweet voice came from over my shoulder. “It was really nice to meet all of you.”

After a round of goodbyes, I was steering Jurnie out the same door we’d come in. Everyone else was going to be leaving too.

“Your family is great,” she told me as we walked to my car. “Your parents must be awesome.”

“They are.” Our doors shut at the same time, then I backed us out of there. “I think we gave my mom a lot of gray hair.”

“Four boys is a lot.”

“Especially when we were teenagers all at the same time.” We left my neighborhood quickly, but I honestly didn’t want to take her back home yet. “You up to be gone a little longer?”

“I’m yours to do with as you wish.”

I knew she meant to not go home. To go wherever I was thinking, innocuously, but fuck if my dick knew that, the way it tightened in my jeans.

11

Jurnie

I could’ve kicked myself for telling Bonham that I was his to do with as he wished. That sounded so brazen, so not like me. I’d meant we could do whatever he wanted—within reason—after we left his parents’ house. It was only ten o’clock and I didn’t have a curfew.

“What are you thinking?” I asked to hopefully ignore the dumb thing I’d just said.

“Just somewhere private.”

A torrent of wind fluttered through me at the idea of being alone with Bonham. We’d been alone, obviously, but there were so many things that could happen. He wouldn’t want to have sex in the car, would he? I didn’t think I was ready for that.

But then he stopped at a park not far from my house. I hadn’t been here in years. He parked near the pond but didn’t turn the Jeep off. The air was still blowing and the soft music still played quietly in the background.

“I used to love this place as a kid,” I told him.

“We used to come here with Daisy when she was little. My brothers and I were content to roughhouse around the yard and neighborhood, but Daisy always wanted to go on the swings. We had a small playset in the backyard, but sometimes she wanted to go higher. This is where my mom would bring us.”

“She probably wanted you to run out your energy.”

I chuckled. “Yeah, probably.”

Bonham and I were turned toward each other as we talked. He reached out to run a lock of my hair through his fingers. Even these innocent touches felt like he was stroking my soul. I wanted to be closer to him but didn’t dare make that move yet.

“How weird would it be if I said that after you told me about Pushing Daisies, I listened to everything you have on Spotify?”

“Not weird at all. That’s awesome.”

“Ten times? Is ten times awesome?” I asked him.

He laughed loudly in the Jeep. “Yes, actually. That’s fantastic. So you have a favorite yet?”

“Hmm.” Well, that was putting me on the spot. “Not specifically, but the ones where Daisy plays her violin the most are all contenders. I love the other stuff too, but—”

“Yeah, yeah. She’s awesome.”

“You’re awesome too,” I said right away.

I didn’t have a crush on his sister, but she was one of the most talented people I knew of. Though I had more than a crush on Bonham, there wasn’t a chance I’d tell him that. He’d get scared off and never speak to me again.

“Did you want to talk about what I said before?” I asked him. It’d be the elephant in the room until we did.

“If you want to.” He glanced at my lips quickly then came right back to my eyes.

“No. If you want to,” I told him. “I know about me. I don’t need to talk about it, but I shouldn’t have spit it out like that earlier because I know some guys get freaked out about it.”

“By what? A girl’s virginity?” he asked. I nodded my head. “Not me, man. That doesn’t freak me out, but I do wonder how in the hell that happened. You’re hot as hell. You must’ve had guys falling all over you.”

“I had people ask me out, but try being a pastor’s daughter whose older sister got pregnant. All of the guys in high school either thought I wouldn’t do it or assumed I was a sure thing and I wasn’t either of those. Then add on to that all of my parents’ restrictions and you get a twenty-one-year-old virgin.”

He chuckled at my rambling, but that was the basics of it. I didn’t want some guy who was with me because he thought I’d put out. I also didn’t want to be with a guy who looked at me as a challenge in that way.

“So why’s your sister so invested in you losing it?”

I rolled my eyes. He probably couldn’t see that in the dim light. “Because she thinks it’s her fault that my parents have been so strict on me. If she hadn’t gotten