I peered around the side of my dad’s car, waiting for Sophie’s car to pull up. I needed her help. And I also needed to hide from Jacob and Axel. Because if I saw one of them in the hall, I wasn’t sure what to do. Not until I knew who the kiss thief was.

I finally saw RJ pull into the parking lot. Sophie took forever walking in this direction. But when she reached my dad’s car, I grabbed her hand and pulled her next to me.

“Good, you’re alive,” Sophie said. “I haven’t heard from you all weekend.”

I hadn’t known what to say to her. And I just needed time to digest everything that had happened. Part of me thought I should keep the texts a secret. It felt like they were only meant for my eyes. But I needed her help. Desperately. I shoved my phone into her hands. “He texted me.”

“Who?”

“The kiss thief.”

“Ooooh. So who was it?”

“I have no idea.”

Sophie frowned. “What?”

“Just read it.”

Sophie scanned the messages. “Damn. He’s so possessive.” She cringed. “And you’re so needy. You texted him five times without a response. What were you thinking?”

“I was thinking I needed to know his freaking name!”

Sophie leaned against the car as she read the messages again. “This is so hot.”

“How is it hot? We have no idea who it is.”

“I know. You have a very mysterious stalker. I love that for you.” She handed me my phone back.

“That’s all you have to say? Sophie, I need to know who this is.”

“Of course. And we have a whole plan for that. The kissing booth at the football game this weekend. Operation Kissing Booth.”

“No! No more operations! Sophie, I’m not kissing the whole football team.”

She smiled. “Would you rather have a blowing booth?”

“What?”

She made a rude gesture with her hand as she pressed her tongue against the inside of her cheek.

I hit her arm. “No, I’m not blowing the whole football team!”

A guy walked by where we were hiding and raised his eyebrows.

Keep walking! I glared at him.

“We’re in the middle of a private conversation,” Sophie said and shooed him away.

He shook his head and kept going.

Sophie turned back to me. “Maybe he was your kiss thief. He was certainly tall. And I bet he has a six-pack. You should go chase him down and plop one on him real quick.”

I groaned.

“I’m kidding. But if you really don’t want to go through with Operation Kissing Booth...”

“I do not.”

“Then we need to start narrowing down the list of potential kiss thieves.”

I hated that thief was now plural.

“We just have to get our hands on a list of everyone on the football team. And their heights. And their phone numbers.”