Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 100713 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 504(@200wpm)___ 403(@250wpm)___ 336(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 100713 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 504(@200wpm)___ 403(@250wpm)___ 336(@300wpm)
“Jason doesn’t love me either,” she said morosely.
“So why are you with him?”
She looked me right in the eye and lifted her shoulders. The breeze ruffled her hair. “I don’t know.”
Tell her to dump him, I thought to myself. Tell her she can do so much better. Tell her she’s the first thing you think of every single morning, and the last thing you think of at night, and you’d be good to her. You’d be so damn good to her.
But I choked on the risk of rejection.
And the moment passed me by.
Lowering her chin, she looked at the ground beneath our feet. “Jason told me last night he doesn’t even want to go to the prom. He just wants to go to the afterparty so he can sit around and get drunk. And I know it’s stupid, but I was really looking forward to dancing at my prom, you know?”
“I’ll dance with you,” I blurted. It was the best I could do.
“Huh?” She looked up at me.
“I’ll dance with you.” My heart was like a thousand horses’ hooves thundering across a field. “At the prom.”
She smiled, tilting her head. “What about your date?”
“I don’t have one yet.”
“Why not?” she asked, her tone slightly scolding. “What are you waiting for?”
What do you think? I wanted to shout at her.
But instead, I did something crazy—I took her face in my hands and crushed my mouth to hers.
A tiny squeak of surprise came from the back of her throat, but she didn’t push me away. Two seconds later, I came to my senses and stepped back.
Both of us were breathing hard.
Her eyes were huge.
My hands were shaking.
“You should—you should ask Katie Keaton to prom,” Maddie said in a strange, high-pitched voice. “She has a crush on you.”
I swallowed hard. “I’ll think about it.”
“Good.” She turned back toward the tree and braced one hand on it, placing the other over her stomach. Her shoulders rose and fell with quick breaths.
Fuck, fuck, fuck, I thought, hanging my head. I’d kissed someone else’s girlfriend. I was no better than goddamn Jason. And I’d probably wrecked my friendship with Maddie too. I wouldn’t have blamed her for leaving right that second.
But she didn’t.
She moved around the tree and spotted the old swing hanging from a branch above. Lowering herself onto the wooden seat, she wrapped her fingers around the ropes. Then she leaned back and peeked at me. “Give me a push?”
I stared at her, and everything I saw—the slightly pink nose, the wide eyes, the dappled sunlight on her soft brown hair—made me weak in the knees. But if she wanted to pretend nothing had happened, I was good with that.
From behind her, I grabbed the ropes, took a few steps back, then let go. When she swung back toward me, I put my hands on her back and gently pushed, again, and again, and again. Eventually we went back inside the house to finish studying.
We never talked about the kiss again.
Three weeks later, I beat the shit out of Jason at the prom afterparty. I did it because he’d gotten too drunk, fooled around with another girl, and a tearful Maddie had asked me for a ride home. As we were walking out, he came after me, calling me an asshole and accusing me of trying to steal his girlfriend.
To this day, my friends claim it’s the maddest they’ve ever seen me. It might be the maddest I’ve ever been. Not because he called me a name, but because he had Maddie and he didn’t deserve her. And in my eyes, the only thing worse than a man who mistreated an animal was a man who mistreated a woman.
I’ve never been sorry.
But that was fifteen years ago. I’d grown up a lot since then.
And I’d worked on Wall Street long enough to know that plenty of liars, cheats, and scumbags had riches they didn’t deserve and got away with being assholes on a daily basis. You couldn’t beat up everybody.
At quarter after one, I made my way from the barn back toward the house. On the way, I glanced over to where that maple tree still stood. Even the swing was still there, moving slightly in the breeze, its ropes frayed by weather and time.
The sight of it made me smile. I could practically see teenage me going in for that kiss like it was do or die—which was exactly how it felt.
But life had led us in different directions. Maybe I’d always have a soft spot for Maddie Blake, but the past was past.
All I wanted to do now was help a friend.
Two
Maddie
“Are we there yet?”
I glanced in the rearview mirror at Elliott, buckled up in the back seat. As usual, he had a unicorn barrette clipped to one side of his head, its rainbow-colored strands of faux hair nestled within his adorable blond curls. His big brown eyes met mine in the mirror, and I could see in them all the impatience and misery of an energetic six-year-old on a five-hour drive.