Total pages in book: 141
Estimated words: 142783 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 714(@200wpm)___ 571(@250wpm)___ 476(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 142783 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 714(@200wpm)___ 571(@250wpm)___ 476(@300wpm)
Perhaps that was why I’d buried myself in the pages of books. In fantasies and faraway lands where this one never existed, and I could be anyone I wanted to be.
I guessed I shouldn’t have been surprised it was there that I first saw you. When I’d been nudged out of a love story that had my pulse racing and my heart in my throat when I’d felt the shimmery disturbance come whispering down the hall.
I’d peered over the couch to find you staring back.
As if you’d felt it, too.
The tall, beautiful boy with black hair and the greenest eyes.
Intrigue.
It sparked and glimmered and called across the space.
Christof nudged you to move along.
I should have let you go and forgotten that I’d ever seen you.
It was forbidden for me to speak to anyone who walked these halls. I really wasn’t supposed to be here at all, but my papa knew my love for books, and my excursions to the library were our little secret.
I waited until you were alone because I somehow needed you to become my secret, too.
I peered around the door at you sitting so unsure at the desk with your backpack at your feet, awkward and confident at the same time.
You didn’t belong there. I knew it in an instant. The same way I knew that I didn’t, either.
“Why are you hiding?” you’d muttered, staring ahead without glancing my way.
I held your first words like one of those dreams.
“Because I have to.”
Then you turned and studied me like I was a mystery. “Are you going to get into trouble?”
My head frantically shook. “No. I’m going to get you into trouble.”
You’d smirked. “Do I look like the kind of guy who minds? I think I can handle it.”
I should have warned you that you would.
But I’d wanted a different story. A better story. And I knew I wanted it with you.
My North Star, my North Star.
It was the first day I believed in you.
FOURTEEN
ASTER
The barest rays of morning light illuminated the bedroom window as I pressed my ear to the door and listened. My heart was a riot in my chest.
Memories of last night lingered like a bad, blissful dream. That sticky, heavy sense that everything was off, that my world no longer rotated the same way, the truth that nothing was going to be the same.
Before dawn, I’d woken drenched in sweat from a nightmare.
In fear.
In those old chains that wanted to drag me back to conformity.
As the day had broken on the snow-covered Earth, I’d come to the quick realization I couldn’t remain that girl. Not anymore. The hardest part was I didn’t want to hurt anyone on the road to finding my destination.
I didn’t want to hurt Logan, and I didn’t want him to hurt me in return.
I’d only secured that as an impossible feat by letting him touch me last night, proven by the last words he’d spoken before he’d strode out the door.
Now, I had no clue what to do. Every step I took seemed to lead me to a greater mistake.
Closer and closer to the man I should be running the opposite direction from.
Silence echoed back from within the apartment, and I carefully turned the knob, cracked the door, and peered out into the hall.
You know, all courageous like.
All was clear.
Inhaling a steeling breath, I tiptoed out, my footsteps quieted as I edged down the hall toward the main room.
I paused at the end of it. There was no sound other than the whooshing of the flames in the fireplace.
But I didn’t need him making a sound to know he was there.
Awareness hummed in the air. A dense aura that held a life-beat. A pulse of possession.
I peeked around the corner.
Every cell in my body was drawn that way when I found him sitting at the small, round table in the nook on the right side of the kitchen.
He sat facing out, thumbing through his phone with a cup of coffee sitting in front of him.
The man was angled back in the chair, and he had an ankle hooked over the opposite knee, wearing another one of those fitted suits that made him look like a king.
My stomach stirred in hunger. My eyes raced to take in every inch.
His black hair was effortlessly styled, his scruff trimmed, that decadent scent coming off him in waves. Though this morning there was a small scab on his bottom lip and newfound violence in his posture.
It looked so damn good on him that it sent a tremor sailing down my spine and shivering out to my fingertips.
I wanted to touch.
He looked up when he felt me there.
“Are you hiding from me, Little Star?”
His words struck through the years. A reminder of who we’d always had to be.
I fumbled out from around the corner.
His eyes skimmed down my body as if he were remembering the view last night. It didn’t seem to matter that I’d pulled on a pair of pink sweats and a loose fitted, long-sleeved white tee and the thickest, fluffiest socks I’d ever worn.