fifty sokeefe kisses

(32) temple

Keefe plopped his face onto the pages of his textbook. Beside him, Sophie looked over in alarm.

"Are you okay?" she asked uncertainly.

"I can't do this anymore."

Sophie set her own homework aside. She'd been reading for hours, and even with her photographic memory it was beginning to become overwhelming. This wasn't her ideal weekend, but with all the responsibilities she faced in the Black Swan and as a Foxfire student, she'd inevitably started to fall behind on schoolwork.

It helped somewhat to have Keefe studying quietly beside her, lying next to her on his stomach while she leaned against the pillows, but it seemed even he was too exhausted to continue.

"Do you want help?" she suggested, rolling onto her side to face him. "I could quiz you on...." She lifted the cover of the textbook to glance at the title. Keefe's head tilted to the side. "... Advanced Principles of Alchemy." Sophie wrinkled her nose in distaste.

Keefe raised his head to look at her with bleary eyes. "I have never read anything so dull," he said. "Not even when my dad made me read a draft of his third autobiography."

She stifled a laugh. "That sounds pretty dull."

"It was five hundred pages long," he continued. "Who writes five hundred pages about themselves? Did I mention this is his third one?"

"I mean, elves live forever," Sophie said. "I'm sure it's not that hard for some of them."

He propped himself up on his elbows to give her an appraising look. "I bet you've done more in your life than they have in centuries of theirs," he told her. "Writing a book about you would be nothing."

She snorted. "Says who?"

"Says me," Keefe declared, leaning forward to press his nose to hers. "I bet I could write three books about you. Maybe ten. And I'd still have things to say."

"Oh, so you're a writer now?"

"Sure. How hard can it be?"

Sophie grinned as she tilted her head towards him, leaning in for a kiss.

The bedroom door, which had been left ajar, suddenly slammed open all the way.

They scrambled upright. Sophie practically shoved Keefe's textbook off the bed in her attempt to move away from him. Not again—

"Forty-five degrees," Sandor squeaked sternly. "The door has to be left open at a forty-five degree angle."

Sophie rolled her eyes. She knew Sandor was just enforcing her parents' rules, but it was still annoying. "It was open," she insisted. "And we're just studying."

"Left open a crack is not forty-five degrees," he shot back.

Keefe lifted a hand and waves at him cheerfully. "Hey, Sandor."

The goblin did not look amused. With an exasperated sigh, he left the room, leaving the door wide open.

"That isn't forty-five degrees, either," Sophie muttered.

Keefe rolled back onto his stomach with a sigh as he flipped open his textbook. "Time to get back to it."

She placed a hand on his arm. "Hey, we can take a quick break for a minute or two."

He glanced up at her dubiously. "But we have to catch up on so much—"

"Nope." Sophie stood and dusted herself off. "I'm going to get us a snack from downstairs. I'll be right back."

Keefe grinned. "You're the best, Foster." He stretched out across the length of the mattress and settled there with a content smile.

She bounded downstairs to the kitchen and swiped a bowl of fuzzy pink fruits, then headed back up to her room before Edaline could spot her and bug her about Keefe.

Sophie slipped through the door (leaving it open slightly less than forty-five degrees, as if Sandor would bother to check) and set the bowl down on her nightstand. "Hey," she began, but stopped when she saw him.

Keefe had spread himself across her bed, his arms folded under his head and resting on the open pages of his textbook. His eyes were closed, face tucked gently into the crook of his elbow, completely still aside from the slow rise and fall of his sleeping breaths.

Sophie's face broke into a smile. She couldn't help but lean down to press an affectionate kiss against his temple, careful not to wake him.

It looked like their study break would be a little longer than just a minute.