Page 1 of Love Me

PROLOGUE

Diego

“I’m moving to New York.”

Those four words hang between us for an indeterminate amount of time.

I stare into my best friend’s honey-brown eyes—the same pair of orbs where I’ve witnessed laughter, happiness, fear, and pain.

The eyes and face I know so well stare at me with apprehension.

“Did you hear me?” she asks.

Somehow, I hear the words over the pounding of my heart. I avert my gaze and concentrate on a point above her head. The fractured, beaten-up wooden boards that manage to hold up the abandoned barn we’re standing in start to mirror my internal condition.

Moving?

To New York?

That wasn’t the plan. After our respective graduations from college, we always intended to move back home to Williamsport.

Monique graduated last week. While I have one semester left, I was biding my time until we were finally back in the same city permanently.

Aside from that, my probation doesn’t end for another two years. I’m not allowed to move out of the state until then.

“Why?” The word comes out of my mouth, sounding hoarse.

“I got a job,” she answers quickly before plastering a smile on her face.

I’ve memorized every expression of hers. This one is fake. Forced.

She continues to watch me as if waiting for my reaction.

All I can think of is how perfect she looks with the afternoon sun streaming in through the broken windows. Its rays make her tawny skin glow.

She bites her lower lip.

Is she afraid?

Could my reactions frighten her?

Taking a step away, I run my palm over the back of my neck.

“You applied for jobs in New York?” I finally ask.

She peers out of the window, glancing down at the stream that runs behind the field where this abandoned barn sits.

Our barn.

Our spot.

We’ve come to this place since we first discovered it at eleven years old. It’s where we’ve shared every important milestone of our life with one another.

Where we shared our first kiss—to get it out of the way.

Where we came when each of us had our first actual break-up.

That terrible day, when Monique found out the truth about her biological father and how she was conceived. The memory of her crying in my arms after learning her mother was assaulted still burns in my brain seven years later.