Total pages in book: 157
Estimated words: 150968 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 755(@200wpm)___ 604(@250wpm)___ 503(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 150968 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 755(@200wpm)___ 604(@250wpm)___ 503(@300wpm)
I’ve never felt this way for a girl before. It’s a foreign feeling, the way my heart hurts at the sight of her hurting. The way I’m enraged on her behalf.
Riley brings out a side of me that I didn’t know I was capable of, didn’t know I had.
Her arms are wrapped around her waist as she hugs herself tightly, her eyes squeezed shut. “Riley,” I say her name cautiously, squatting down beside her.
She lets out a tiny squeak, her head snapping up in response. Her brown eyes are big and glassy with tears. Her hand flutters to her chest in panic, but then I see the moment she recognizes me. Her eyes soften. “It’s you,” she whispers shakily.
It’s almost like I can’t stop myself; there’s a fierce need in me to reach out to her.
To touch her. To soothe her.
My hand comes up, and my fingers brush against her wet cheek, wiping the tears away. Her soft skin is cold from the chilly breeze. I cup her face, and she leans into my palm, as if she’s seeking warmth from me. More tears spill from her eyes, and I wipe them all away.
“Shh, it’s okay,” I croon gently. I want to ask her what happened, I want to know the cause of her pain, her tears. But I don’t ask, because that’s the last thing she needs from me right now. “You’re okay, I got you. You’re safe.”
Riley sways unsteadily toward me, and I do the only thing that feels right in this moment.
I take her in my arms, and she buries her face in my neck. She’s not crying anymore, but her tiny sniffles are breaking my goddamn heart. I pull her into my lap, and she settles against my chest. So small in my arms, so fragile…
I’m quickly filled with a wild thought — I want to keep here, in my lap. For as long as I can have her. For as long as she wants.
“Why are y-you here?” Riley finally croaks, after a long minute of silence.
“I was forced to come,” I tell her honestly, my arms tightening around her waist. I like how her softness feels against the hard, rough edges of my body. “But I think I was meant to be here tonight.”
I was meant to find you — broken under the moonlight, in this field where nobody else saw you, but me.
She shifts on my lap and peeks up at me through her wet lashes. I feel like I’ve been punched in the gut. Riley is so fucking pretty, with her loose blonde hair, flushed cheeks and teary eyes. Her lips are swollen and the color is an angry pink, as if she’s been biting on them for too long. “What do you mean?” she breathes.
“Do you believe in kismet?” A predetermined destiny.
A destiny that somehow keeps bringing us together, in the most unexpected ways.
Riley blinks up at me. “I guess. But fate has always been cruel to me.”
“Fate has been cruel to me too,” I tell her, swallowing past the heavy lump in my throat.
“I heard…” she trails off, chewing on the inside of her cheek thoughtfully. “I heard where you came from. I mean, before you got adopted by your aunt and uncle. You have a sister, right?”
The Hales are popular around here, so, of course, she’s heard of my family history. When Benjamin and Naveah Hale adopted a boy, out of nowhere, after years of being childless, everyone had questions. Everyone was curious and so the rumors started.
Nobody knows the exact details. Though. But not all the rumors are false. I did come from a filthy, poor background. My mother was an addict. My father is a felon and has been absent most of my life, in and out of prison. I did live in a trailer park for all my life, until now.
I tuck a stubborn strand of her silky hair behind her ear. “I do have a younger sister.”
Her palm rests on my chest, right over my beating heart. Her touch is almost featherlight, soft and tentative. “What’s her name, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“Naomi.” Saying her name out loud, after so long, has my heart aching.
“That’s a beautiful name,” Riley whispers. “Do you miss her?”
“Like crazy,” I confess softly. “She’s all I had, until…she was taken away from me.”
“Does that ever make you angry? How unfair fate is.”
I shift, moving to lie on my back on the grass and taking Riley with me. She doesn’t protest; she simply curls up against my body. “I’ve been angry for so long, but my aunt told me that when kismet takes…it gives something else in return. It’s the gift of our patience.”
Riley presses into me, almost like she’s seeking warmth and trying to bury herself under my skin. We’re lying in the middle of the field, and nothing about this feels weird or uncomfortable. It feels right. Almost intimate.