Falling Into Love with You (The Hate-Love Duet Book 2) by Rowe, Lauren (grave mercy .TXT) 📕

For what this means for womankind.” She turns and massages my shoulders, like she’s my cornerman in a prizefight, about to send me into the ring in a title bout. “Okay, Laila. You gotta represent, girl. Make womankind proud.”

“I’ll give it my all, coach!” I say, dancing from foot to foot like a boxer. And when Aloha happens to walk by, an idea pops into my head. Kai Cook is a “too cool for school” type. The last person in the world who’d ever “fanboy” over anyone, least of all a Disney-star-turned-pop-princess. I remember Kendrick once telling me about the time he made his big brother “fanboy” over Keane Morgan, the actor from Alessandra’s video shoot, during a game of “Birthday Truth or Dare,” so, I decide to follow Kendrick’s expert lead for my first foray into the game.

“Kai, you’re up first,” I say. “I dare you to fanboy over Aloha, until you get her to sing the theme song to ‘It’s Aloha!’ for the entire party. If you can’t convince her to sing it, then you have to do it.”

Our entire group, other than Kai, breaks into raucous laughter. As we all know, Kai doesn’t sing. At all. He’s a fantastic bass player. One of the best in the business. But God did not bless him with dulcet vocal cords. Which is why, fun fact, Kai is the only member of Fugitive Summer who never supplies background vocals on any of their songs. Not even the singalong “la la’s” in “Hate Sex High.”

Predictably, Kai looks tortured as the rest of us laugh with glee. Scowling, he says, “You’re girlfriend’s a savage, Savage.”

Savage smiles at me. “She sure is. It’s my favorite thing about her.”

In the end, though, as torturous as the dare sounds, it turns out to be a softball. Not surprisingly, Aloha wound up refusing to sing the theme song to her long-running Disney show—after ten years of hearing it everywhere the poor girl went, she now hates that song with the passion of a thousand suns. But when Kai finally dragged himself to standing on a chair, poised to sing the hideous song for the entire party, and Ruby turned off the blaring music and got everyone’s attention while I sat at the piano to accompany Kai, my victim didn’t get two words into the first verse before the entire party started singing loudly along with him. In fact, thanks to the iconic theme song being burned into our generation’s gray matter, everyone at the party couldn’t help singing along with Kai, the same way a knee can’t help kicking forward when batted by a doctor’s rubber hammer. In fact, by the song’s end, even Aloha had started singing along with Kai and the crowd, despite herself. Which tells me she’s drunk as hell or an awfully good sport.

When the singalong led by Kai finishes, the entire party applauds and whoops and asks for another singalong. And so, seeing as how I’m sitting at the piano, and 22 Goats is here at the party, I play one of my all-time favorite singalongs—“Fireflies”—the same one we performed at Reed’s party. The song I performed for Savage this morning, before he gave me some mighty fine birthday oral sex. And, immediately, it’s clear I’ve picked well. On the iconic line, “Girl, you made butterflies your bitch!” the crowd sings at the tops of their lungs. And in each easy, singalong chorus, the party practically blows the roof off our reality TV mansion.

When our collective performance ends, the crowd demands another song. But this time, I stand on the piano bench and tell everyone to put a cork in it because I’m playing my first ever game of “Birthday Truth or Dare” and won’t be distracted from it a moment longer.

“That performance from Kai kicked off our game,” I explain. “And now, it’s time for my dare for Kendrick!” The crowd cheers, apparently already feeling as invested in the game as I do. With a wide smile, I address Kendrick. “KC, I dare you to hit on Reed Rivers over there, to the very best of your abilities, stopping only after you’ve successfully made him smile.”

Everyone but Reed claps and hoots in response to my edict. Reed shouts, “Leave me out of this, Fitzgerald!” But his tone is playful.

“Aw, come on, Reed,” Savage yells. “It’s her birthday!”

The crowd goads Reed on, enthusiastically, until, finally, the music mogul relents.

“Okay, fine,” Reed says, and, in response, the crowd cheers like their team just scored a goal at the World Cup.

“Don’t go easy on him, Reed!” I shout across the room. “You have to make Kendrick work for that smile!”

“I know of no other way,” Reed deadpans.

And away we go. To the great pleasure of the crowd, Kendrick saunters over to Reed. But he doesn’t stop when he reaches him. He walks right on by. Immediately, though, Kendrick doubles back, looks Reed up and down lasciviously, and says, “Oh, hey there, baby. Do you believe in love at first sight . . . or should I walk past you again?”

Of course, the crowd loves it and reacts accordingly. But Reed doesn’t look even tempted to smile. In fact, Reed replies flatly, “No, you can keep on walking with a piss-poor line like that, motherfucker.”

Kendrick snorts. “It’s not gonna get much better than that, unfortunately.” As the crowd laughs and applauds, Kendrick puffs out his cheeks, contemplating his next attempt. But when it’s clear Kendrick is ready to try again, the crowd goes quiet with anticipation. “Hey, baby,” Kendrick says to Reed. “Do me a favor. Feel my shirt.”

“Because it’s made of ‘boyfriend material’?” Reed supplies. “Sorry, you’re gonna have to do better than that.”

“Fuck.”

Everyone in the room, other than Reed, guffaws again.

But Kendrick won’t be denied. Squaring his shoulders, Kendrick flashes Reed an incredibly hot smolder and says, “Hey there, sexy . . . I seem to have lost my phone number. Can I—”

“Have mine?” Reed interrupts. “No. Fuck off.”

There’s another round of