Double Dare (A Neighbor from Hell Book 6) Read Free

she’d love to ignore him and go home, something in his tone had her stopping and turning around to glare at him.
                  “You see what exactly?” she asked, narrowing her eyes on him.
                  “That you’re a chicken,” he said with that cocky smile of his, the same one that most of the men in his family seemed to have perfected by the age of ten.
                  She blinked up at him, sure that she’d misheard him. “I’m a chicken because I didn’t want to go in a closet and get felt up by some boy that I barely know?”
                  “No,” he said, shaking his head with a heavy sigh as he leaned back against the wall, “because you’re running away from your feelings for me.”
                  “My feelings for you?” she repeated back slowly, wondering if he’d managed to hit his head today.
                  “You’re madly in love with me,” he said solemnly, making her roll her eyes in exasperation.
                  “Puhlease,” she said, shaking her head as she turned around and headed for the path and the cookie dough that she’d hidden in the back of fridge.
                  “Everyone knows”
                  “Then everyone is delusional,” she said, not bothering to bite back her smile as she ducked beneath an overhanging branch and stepped onto the well-worn path.
                  “This just proves how badly you want me,” he explained as he joined her on the path.
                  “Because I’m walking away from you?” she asked dryly as she ducked beneath another branch.
                  “I think running would be a more fitting word,” he said, sounding thoughtful and earning an exasperated shake of her head and a roll of her eyes as she placed her hand on his arm to steady herself as she stepped over a fallen log blocking their path.
                  “Really?”
                  “Mmmmhmm.”
                  “You do realize that I was leaving the party before you showed up, right?” she asked with a resigned sigh as he hung that large arm of his over her shoulders.
                  “Because you sensed me.”
                  “You’re right. I did,” she admitted with a solemn nod.
                  “I knew it,” he said, sighing heavily as he gave her shoulders a gentle squeeze. 
                  “Want to tell me why you bothered to show up at all?” she asked, shooting him a curious glance to find him looking down at her.
                  “Why wouldn’t I show up?” he asked, frowning.
                  “Because you weren’t invited?”
                  He shrugged it off. “That usually doesn’t stop me.”
                  Well, that was true…
                  “There’s also the fact that you said that you had no interest in going to that party,” she reminded him as they navigated their way around a large puddle blocking their path.
                  “I changed my mind,” he simply said as they stepped back on the path.
                  “About?”
                  “Waiting until later to give you your dare,” he said offhandedly and if she hadn’t been watching the cute little chipmunk sitting in the middle of the trail she probably would have realized what he’d said sooner.
                  As it was, she’d barely managed to break away from him before he asked, “Don’t you want to hear your dare?”
                  “No!” she yelled over her shoulder as she darted off towards the right, hoping the dense woods would provide her with some sort of protection, but thanks to her lack of athletic ability and a thick root sticking out of the ground, she didn’t make it very far before