Page 67 of Jack
He’d turned off the highway, toward the town of Waconia.
“I don’t love where this is going.”
“All the way to seventh grade when I entered a book-writing contest. First ever in our community, and oh, I wanted to win. Badly.” She drew in a breath. “So I plagiarized a book I’d gotten from the library.”
“That, I didn’t see coming.”
“It got worse when I won. That’s when my mother read the book. She realized quickly that I couldn’t have written the story, got the librarian involved, and they sleuthed it out.”
“Yourmother? Ouch.”
“She wasn’t wrong, but my father was not on board when she went to the principal. They took away the award, gave it to the second-place winner?—”
“Please tell me it wasn’t Jenna.”
“No. Thankfully. But oh, that was the fight that finally ended it. My dad said that Mom should have had more loyalty and grace, and she said he was impossible to trust, and both of them blamed each other for my lack of ethics, and . . . anyway, six months later, they were divorced. My father moved to Minneapolis, then to Arizona with Jenna’s mom, and I really haven’t seen him since.”
Silence beside her. Finally, “So he just . . . ghosted you?”
“Walked away without a word.”
He swallowed, then looked over at her. Another beat, and he turned his gaze back to the road. “I shouldn’t have done that.”
She blinked at him.
“After . . .”
“I know when.”
“Yeah. Well.” He stopped at a light, sighed. “I might have overreacted. At the time . . . I was mortified.”
“I know.” She gave him a sad smile. “I should have told you I was Bee.”
“No. Youweren’tBee. Bee was a twelve-year-old girl who used to camp out in the backyard with Boo and made cookies with my mom and was sort of like a kid sister. You showed up at spring break with your long blonde hair, tan and smart, and any hope of me seeing Bee vanished.” He offered a small, wry smile. “I liked what I saw.”
Everything inside her stilled—her breath, her heart, her regrets. He met her eyes then, something in them that she hadn’t seen . . . well, since that spring break, maybe. A glimpse into the man behind the persona.
The look he’d given her right before he’d kissed her. Desire, curiosity?—
Wait.“Liked.”Past tense.
“Which made finding out you were actuallyBee,my kid sister’s best friend, that much worse, of course.”
Of course.
He blinked, and the look vanished. “I never meant to hurt you. I just didn’t know what to do. So I panicked. But I’m . . . I’m sorry I hurt you.”
He just might be breaking her heart all over again. But she wasn’t eighteen with a head full of fairy tales anymore. Somehow she managed to nod.
The light turned green and he turned, the hospital in sight.
Good thing, because she might need resuscitation. Mostly because her brain was caught on . . .liked.
He’d liked her. And sure, his kiss could have told her that, but . . .
But maybe it hadn’t been just a spring fling. Maybe . . .
Oh, no, no. Pay attention to the grammar!