Page 31 of Enter if you Dare: Part Two

Noa laughs. “That was all Cipher. He made them tip her, since he felt bad about what he had convinced her to do.”

“I’m not great in high-pressure situations. I had to get Noa to talk to her, and I felt bad stealing her number from your phone,” Cipher explains, his ears turning red.

“And what part did Cave play in all of this?”

“He is the muscle, you know, in case she didn’t agree. Then we would have used our attack scarecrow,” Noa adds, and Cave flips him off.

I text Leni back, asking her which one of my boyfriends she spoke to. She quickly sends me a reply saying that I’d better call her when I’m not up to my eyeballs in dicks. Now that is not the reaction I was expecting.

Noa

After the Harvest Moon, we sleep until one in the afternoon. I’m the first awake—which never happens—but I stay exactly where I am because moving would be a crime. Valli is asleep on Cave’s chest with her hand curled in Cipher’s shirt, and he is asleep while half-sitting against the headboard. I am lying on the other side of Cipher, and Cave has an arm slung over all of us, even if only the tips of his fingers touch me.

As I lie here, my mom’s words ring through my head, the ones about me loving everybody so hard my chest hurts. I try to focus on anything else: the snoring scarecrow, Cipher drooling, Valli wearing my hoodie. They are all mine. I might love them too hard, but they are all equipped to handle my kind of love.

Valli’s stomach growls, and Cave wakes—so does Cipher. We all stay there in silence for almost five minutes before Valli stirs. Finally, I slip out of bed to get a head start on making breakfast. It might be two in the afternoon, but for us it’s time for breakfast, so I make pancakes. Cipher is next to come out, and he turns on the coffeemaker. We work together until Cave and Valli come out freshly showered, and they set the table.

Once the pancakes are done, I place them in the center of the table. Valli grabs a couple and loads hers with maple syrup.

“So how long have you three been planning my kidnapping?”

“Eleven days,” Cipher answers.

“Twelve,” I correct him. “If you count the day Cave came up with the idea.”

Her eyebrows go up. “It was Cave’s idea?”

“Yup,” I say, shoving a mouthful of pancake in. “He stole your file, put the page with your fears down on the table, and gave us the look.” I mimic Cave’s look, and Valli chokes on her coffee. “And that was it. Cipher said, and I quote, ‘okay,’ and then we started planning.”

“We had rehearsals,” Cipher interjects.

“Sorry, we had rehearsals,” I confirm proudly. “I was you and got kidnapped nine times. Though Cave dropped me twice, which is why the route changed. I also did your scream so we could see how far the sound carried. Everyone agreed it was uncanny.”

“Nobody agreed,” Cipher says, shaking his head.

“Cave did.”

Cave, who is already on his second serving of pancakes, also shakes his head. Ouch! Such betrayal while eating a breakfast I made.

“What about my phone dying three steps into the cemetery? It was almost at full charge since I had it plugged in at Nixie’s office.”

Cipher’s ears go pink. “Your phone’s on the island’s network now. I had a little help from Clay. It came back on before we hit the bluff.”

“That is the most terrifying thing any of you have ever done.”

“Thank you,” Cipher says with a smile.

She stares at him for a second, then leans across the syrup and kisses him, and his ears go from pink to red.

“One more question.” She wipes her thumb across Cipher’s jaw where he had a smidge of syrup. “Whose idea was the bluff?”

Cave taps his chest.

“Of course it was. And the bag over my head?”

He nods. Cave planned almost every step, walking the path to make sure there were no obstacles in our way so we didn’t drop her, and he may have killed us if we did. Hence, most of the time it was him and Cipher carrying her.

She gets up from her seat and goes to him, and he pulls her onto his lap. She says something into his neck, and whatever it is, his eyes close.