Total pages in book: 185
Estimated words: 191421 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 957(@200wpm)___ 766(@250wpm)___ 638(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 191421 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 957(@200wpm)___ 766(@250wpm)___ 638(@300wpm)
“Dear Diary, huh.”
“More like Dear Holly.” Then, “I sort of name my diaries, depending on how they feel. This one feels like a Holly, all cute and pink.”
“Maybe you should call it Bubblegum then.”
“Don’t —”
“Because it sounds like you. And I’ll remember that for next time.”
“What?”
“That you like diaries.”
“I don’t underst...”
My words trail off when he steps back and does the most astonishing thing. The most bizarre — outlandish and strange and surreal — thing.
He goes down on his knees.
Or rather one knee.
And I’m…
I’m so shocked that all I can do is sputter. “What’s… What are you…”
“Giving you your gift,” he replies, apparently understanding my half-baked sentences.
“What?”
Like last year, he reaches back into his pocket and fishes something out. For a second or so, I think it’s a lighter and my belly whooshes. Not in fear but excitement.
In anticipation that he might set fire to the sky again.
For my birthday.
But it’s not a lighter.
It’s something else. Something shiny.
Something chiming.
And then he’s touching me.
He’s touching me.
My ankle.
He’s touching, gripping my ankle.
And before I can process that, he lifts my foot and places it on his thigh. My arms shoot up and fly, landing on his shoulders. All of this happens so fast, like in a second or two, that it feels like magic.
Or maybe it’s him.
He feels like magic.
The heat of his fingers around my ankle and the roughness of his summer skin feel like magic. Or the fact that everything about him is so hard and muscular, the slant of his shoulders, the bulge in his thigh.
He is all… boy.
Hard and heated and muscled. Masculine.
He’s the first guy I’ve touched like this. Or who’s touched me like this.
“What are you doing?”
I know I won’t get an answer though.
Because he’s busy elsewhere.
His entire focus is on my foot.
So I focus on it as well and what I see makes me fist his t-shirt — gosh it’s so soft — all tight and hard. He’s wrapping something around my ankle, that shiny thing that he’d gotten out of his pocket. Which makes me realize what it is.
“An anklet,” I whisper.
I watch in fascination as he — his big and strong fingers — deftly closes a very delicate and fragile-looking clasp as he puts his gift on me. When he’s done and I feel it rustling against my skin, my toes curl again. “You’re giving me an anklet.”
Finally he looks up. “So you can’t sneak up on me again.”
I swallow, my curled toes flexing. “I didn’t though. You caught me last time.”
His reddish-brown eyes flash with the memory. “I did, yeah.”
My fingers in his t-shirt tighten even more. “It’s beautiful.”
Just like the fireworks last year.
Just like his eyes, his face, him.
“Yeah,” he whispers back and I know, I know for a fact, that he isn’t talking about the anklet.
He’s talking about me.
Me.
Exactly like last time.
“Is that why,” I swallow, “you came here tonight? To give me a birthday gift.”
He did, didn’t he?
Running into him wasn’t a coincidence.
He was looking for me like I was looking for him.
“Thirteen, yeah?” he rasps.
My heart skips a beat and I nod. “Yes.”
And he’s sixteen.
He’s a sophomore and I’m not even in high school yet.
Maybe that’s why he thought that I was too young for him, and I bet he still thinks that.
I don’t like it though.
I do not like it one bit.
Tightening my fist in his shirt and digging my heel in his thigh, I say, “I… It’s not that young. I-I mean I’m not, I’ve never been, very young. It’s all the books I read. I’ve always been super worldly and mature because of it. And like, my teachers and all, they’ve always called me precocious and smart. I mean,” I blush, “I think we… I don’t think that there’s any reason why we can’t be friends. We —”
“There’s a reason.”
“What?”
I’m not sure what he meant just then. And unfortunately, I don’t get an explanation from him because we get interrupted again.
Just like last year.
By another voice.
“Jesus, there you are.”
My eyes swivel in the direction the voice had come from, thinking that this cannot be happening again. Another guard cannot be coming to take him away.
But it’s not a guard.
It’s a boy.
More importantly, it’s a boy Reign’s age, I think.
He stands at a distance from us and his gaze — puzzled and confused — is pinned on me. Before he shifts his focus to Reign and then lower.
To my foot.
Which I realize is still on Reign’s thigh.
Blushing furiously, I take it off and jump apart from him.
“Did I interrupt something?” the guy asks.
“No,” I quickly reply even though the question was for Reign.
I’m not sure why I’m so flustered but I am. Maybe because he is interrupting something and the urge to tell him off for that is so strong that I had to say no.
At my answer, the guy’s eyes come back to me and he tilts his head to the side slightly. As if trying to figure out what’s going on.