[Complete] [18+]
In the picturesque lakeside town, the calm waters mask the storm within Juniper Jenkins' heart. Betrayed and broken by her cheating boyfriend, she flees to the sanctuary of her friend's lakeside house, to work remotely for the summe...
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"June, will you at least try to smile?"
"I am smiling," I retort, shooting Ellis a glare. She fusses with my cowboy hat, adjusts my shirt once more, and finally turns around to face her phone, holding it up to capture a photo of the three of us.
"Well, smile harder then," Ellis says, to which I roll my eyes while Delaney snickers at the two of us.
She quickly snaps a few selfies of us on the bleachers at the rodeo, as I try to smile 'harder'.
She coerced both Delaney and me into wearing cowboy hats and cowboy boots for her latest sponsor, despite our initial resistance. Claiming they wouldn't pay her if we didn't dress up. But I think she's lying.
We are all dressed in coordinating outfits. Ellis in a jean skirt with a white button-up tied at the front, Delaney in a creamy babydoll dress, and me dressed in off-white shorts and a matching top.
How she thinks we're going to stay clean in nothing but white at a rodeo, I have no idea.
Nonetheless, it's all a distraction. Distractions are good. Distractions are more than good right now; they are sublime. Because as soon as I'm not distracted, my mind starts drifting. It drifts to Wells kissing me, to Wells touching me, to Wells biting my lip, to Wells making that noise when he dipped his tongue into my mouth. The noise that makes me need to clench my knees together every time I think about it.
I shiver as goosebumps break out all over my skin. I'm not so distracted anymore.
Delaney watches me and asks, "Cold?"
"Oh, uh, no." I shake my head, lying, "I thought I felt a bug on me."
"Okay, I think we got one," Ellis says, scrolling through her pictures. "But Delaney, what are you doing with your hand?" She scrunches her face.
Delaney leans in to examine the photo on Ellis's phone. "Ellis, that's your hand!"
"Is not!"
They banter back and forth as I shift my gaze back to the rodeo, and my mind starts to wander again. Thankfully I know this is the very last place I'll see Wells. He'd never show up to a place like this. That and I've scanned the crowd at least twenty times. He's not here.
Now that this article is done and the internet being fixed as of today, I don't have to see Wells anymore. I don't have to work with him, and things can go back to how they were before.
The daydreams of his kisses will fade. I won't have to worry that I'll pounce on him just from him being in the same room as me because I'm pretty sure I have no self-control now. And then everything will go back to normal like nothing ever happened. Right?
Please tell me I'm right.
I take my hat off and grab the book I had shoved inside earlier, fully aware that I would grow bored unlike Delaney and Ellis, who seem fully engrossed in watching the bull riders.
