I should let it go. I knew I should. But there was an itching inside of me that couldn’t be contained, and I opened my phone and pulled up the website as I moved back to the couch. I sank down onto the blanket I’d dragged out from the hall closet and ticked into another blog post.
I read it.
Then I read another.
And another.
Until hours had passed and my mind spun and my spirit thrashed.
I got lost as I read about a girl who was beautiful in every way.
Inside and out.
Just like I’d always known she’d been. What had really attracted me to her in the first place. That shy beauty ushering me up to a cliff and her kindness pushing me over the edge.
A girl who confessed to being fearful and anxious and prone to panic attacks in large groups.
Giving and loving and hopeful in spite of it all.
A girl who had grown into a woman who had managed to get her teaching degree despite her worry and doubt.
Hand shaking, I clicked into another post, titled Something About a Hot Guy. I wanted to cringe, knowing I was really invading her privacy as she opened up about her trouble meeting men. How she confessed to being a virgin because she didn’t have the first clue how to get close to a man, let alone, let one touch her.
Then I tripped over the next words, heart pressing against my ribs so hard I was pretty sure I heard a crack.
Words that said she was in love with her best friend’s big brother, and being unable to admit it was killing her inside.
Fuck me.
Three
Kenna
Would it be weird if I stayed in bed all day? I mean, it was Saturday. That would be cool, right? Except I’d been staring at the ceiling for the last . . . sixty-seven minutes . . . three minutes more than the last time I looked at the clock.
Two more minutes of this, and I would lose my mind.
I’d left my computer in the kitchen last night, too much of a chicken to go back out to grab it when I realized I’d left it sitting next to the sink.
Crap.
I flung off my covers with the dramatic flair of one of my freshmen high-school students, and I jumped from the bed, only to slow, slinking to the bathroom across the hall all ninja-like. As if I were the intruder rather than the other way around.
It didn’t really matter.
I could feel him the second I opened the door, a surge of energy that crashed through the morning air, filled with intensity and zest and life.
Kyle Love was the kind of guy who could reach out and take the world in the palm of his hand. Stretch it out and all the amazing things would intrinsically be drawn to him.
Dull, frumpy, awkward things, too.
I raced through my morning routine because I definitely didn’t want him to think I was in there doing you know what, cringing at the thought, self-conscious and unsure as I edged back out toward the kitchen.
I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw that he was out on the balcony, a cup of coffee in hand as he leaned on the railing, his back bare and delicious and muscular as he stared out over the bustling city below.
Oh God.
He was magnificent.
A god who’d descended on the common folk.
Want tremored through me like an earthquake. Shaking through my being. Strong enough that it threatened to fracture the thin threads that held my safe, little world together.
I allowed myself creeper status for exactly five seconds, swallowing down the sight of him and filing it away in all the reasons Kyle Love was five-thousand miles out of my league.
My mind was only taunting me last night, torturing me with the idea that he might see me differently. That he might want me the way I wanted him.
Prying myself from the morning view, I headed into the kitchen, in dire need of one of those cups of coffee he was nursing. I fumbled for a cup in the cupboard, trying to keep my hand from shaking all over the place when a rash of goosebumps skidded across my flesh when a shadow fell over me from behind.
The same way as it had done last night. Only this time . . . this time it felt entirely different. This time, something about it felt unstoppable. Overwhelming and crushing and irresistible.
My shoulders curled in as if I were trying to find a place to hide, but there was no place I could go. Nothing I could do to escape the magnitude of him inching up behind me, his steps slow and somehow purposed.
I sucked in a staggered breath, then all the air whooshed from my lungs when he set a hand on my neck and pressed his cheek to the opposite side, right up close to my temple.