Total pages in book: 197
Estimated words: 199143 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 996(@200wpm)___ 797(@250wpm)___ 664(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 199143 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 996(@200wpm)___ 797(@250wpm)___ 664(@300wpm)
Nothing else.
He took a seat beside her on the back steps, folding his arms over his bent knees while he looked out over the rear property. The two of them stayed quiet for longer than she cared to admit before he broke the silence first.
“It’s not fair ... to you, I mean,” he said, peeking over at her over the line of his forearm. “To be here, and for me to be there. That’s a long way, and it’s going to be like that for a long time. What, you never wanna go anywhere or do anything with somebody?”
Was he saying what she thought he was?
“But—”
“And when we’re like this, I like it,” he said. “Just me and you, you know? I like that because I don’t have to feel like you’re not getting to do whatever you want. Nothing really changed, Cece, it just turned into something that had to be different.”
“I don’t wanna do whatever.”
“Not right now, maybe.”
“Juan—”
His hand dropped from his knee and found hers on the smooth wood of the porch. Without a word, their fingers tangled tightly together, and before long, Cece found her head resting on his shoulder.
Everything was right, then.
Perfect, even.
“See,” he murmured, “just me and you.”
Yeah.
Just him and her.
Chapter 8 - Jealous
Juan POV
16 years old ...
I’ll text you later, k?
Juan read over Cece’s text a third time as he entered the house. The conversation between his mother and father echoed down the hall, but he didn’t pay them much attention. He was more concerned with Cece’s text because that wasn’t like her at all.
All right, he texted back, later.
He tried to shake off the strange feeling that settled on his shoulders, if only because he didn’t even know why he felt it in the first place. It wasn’t like this was the first time he’d ever texted Cece and she blew him off—even if that’s not exactly what her text said or did.
“You’ve got practice in an hour, right?” Juan’s father called as he passed the kitchen doorway.
“Yeah.”
“Truck will be warm.”
“Thanks.”
It was kind of pointless for Juan to shower before baseball practice when he was just going to need to shower again after, but he didn’t care. Using the attached bathroom in his bedroom, he jumped in the shower and made quick work of cleaning away the day. By the time he was done, he’d almost forgotten about Cece and the strange text. Gathering all his baseball gear and hauling it downstairs—he’d be happy when soccer season came back around—his father waited out in the driveway next to the truck.
Running, too.
Just like he said.
Juan, on the other hand, was looking at his phone again while he balanced his baseball bag in his other hand and didn’t pay the slightest bit of attention to the driveway as he walked across it.
“What are you doing?”
“Checking something,” Juan replied.
“Checking what?”
He didn’t want to say Cece, because Miguel would give him that look, so Juan opted to say nothing at all. His father let him toss the baseball bag into the back of the truck, and while Miguel busied himself with getting in the vehicle, Juan took the chance to scroll down through his social media feeds. Cece didn’t spend a lot of time on social media. She just didn’t care, even if that was all every girl around their age seemed to care about.
Her friends, though?
They posted every minute.
Tagged her.
Photos of Cece.
Status or video stories about this, that, or another thing. All pretty typical, and sometimes that was the quicker way for him to find out where Cece was when he wanted to chat, or whatever.
Right then, though, he wasn’t finding anything.
And it wasn’t really his business to keep looking, he decided. It didn’t matter if her text didn’t sit well with him, or that he looked forward to talking to her every day that he got home from school. He didn’t own Cece—they weren’t a thing by his own choice, something she’d reminded him when ever she felt he needed it. Sometimes, that was more than Juan wanted to admit. If she didn’t want to talk right then, she didn’t want to talk. It was as simple as that.
Or it needed to be.
Juan didn’t get a say.
“Come on, we’re going to be fucking late!” Miguel shouted from the truck.
Juan jumped in.
And set his phone aside for the time being.
After all, Cece did say later.
So, there would be that.
*
“That batting average, son,” Miguel said, tone thick with praise as he clapped a hand to the back of Juan’s shoulder hard enough to make him almost choke on the water he currently chugged back like it was his only life source. After a hard practice, hydration was the only thing that kept him alive sometimes. “Keep that up, and in a year the scouts will be coming around, huh?”