Read Online The Holiday Hoax by Skylar M. Cates - Free Book Online

should speak honestly with him, but it was so hard. I was afraid of what he might say. Was it so wrong to want to live in hope?
    “Evan, I forgot a few things at the store.” Mom handed me a giant bowl. “Can you get the chocolate chip cookies started, and I’ll be back?”
    “Sure.”
    But after she left, I wandered out of the kitchen to look for JD, who was in the living room texting on his phone. I’d seen JD texting a few times on his phone, his face disappointed as he checked for replies, but this was the first time he’d caught me watching him.
    “It’s Christmas Eve tomorrow.” JD gestured to the phone with a guilty look. “If Shawn were ever to call me, it would be now.”
    “Last night you said he’d never accept you?”
    “I know, but he’s my brother. Ah, forget it. I’m being dumb.” He looked at me. “Why don’t we change the subject, okay?”
    “Okay. Want to make cookies?”
    “Sounds good.”
    JD and I quickly assembled all the ingredients on my mom’s recipe card, starting with the dry parts, like flour and baking soda, which we tossed into the bowl. We mixed some eggs in, and then JD measured out the brown sugar. After the vanilla and butter were added, we reached the final and best ingredient of all—the chocolate chips. I peeked at JD’s biceps as he stirred the dough. It takes some hard work to stir chocolate chip cookies by hand. Watching his muscles at work, I bit my lip rather than reveal that Mom’s electric mixer was in the nearby cabinet.
    JD said, “I love this smell.” He rolled the dough into balls and then handed them to me to place on the ungreased cookie sheet.
    “I’d eat it raw if my mom wouldn’t have a fit,” I agreed. I set the timer on the oven. “Has there ever really been a case of salmonella from the eggs in cookie batter? Inquiring minds want to know.”
    “Yeah, it’s urban legend. Like licking the back of a stamp will make you ill.”
    “Or drinking Coke with Mentos can explode your stomach.”
    “Lots of surprising things in your kitchen are dangerous in the right circumstances. Nutmeg, for instance, can be a hallucinogenic drug. If you take enough of it.”
    “Huh.” The oven beeped as it reached the desired temperature. “I should start hanging out with science nerds more often.”
    “We can be useful.” JD took an oven mitt and pulled out the cookie sheet. “But don’t try the nutmeg thing. Too much can kill you.”
    “Death by nutmeg? Yep, that’d be the way I’d probably die, all right. It would be fitting.”
    “The only thing that would make these cookies better, would be a kiss pressed right in the center,” JD said. “Hershey’s are good.”
    “I love chocolate,” I replied. Okay, technically JD really might be thinking about cookie dough, but I seized the opportunity. “Hershey’s, Dove’s, Godiva. I like all kinds of kisses.” I flirted. “Not that those other companies can call their chocolate ‘kisses,’ I think Hershey’s owns the name or something—” God , could I suck any more at this ? “—but I like the taste of any chocolate.”
    “Evan.”
    JD said my name as if he were in pain. He didn’t seem to think my attempts at seduction were a C minus at best. He was smiling at me as if everything were perfect—more than perfect. He took a chocolate chip from the bag and offered it to me. Opening my mouth, I let the chocolate melt on my tongue. I could taste the tip of JD’s finger for a second and longed to suck it. The chocolate taste lingered in my mouth.
    As I reached into the bag and fed a chip to JD, I whispered, “I want some more chocolate.”
    “I’m craving more too,” JD said. “I never wanted anything so badly.”
    My entire body reacted at those words. A shiver moved through me as he watched. We hadn’t known each other long at all, so why did it feel as if JD understood me better than anybody else in the universe? The scent of cookie dough and chocolate was in the air. I held his arm