Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 94609 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 378(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 94609 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 378(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
She’s sunshine and chaos dressed in a flower crown. She’s a wildflower in a world I’ve spent years trying to keep simple and quiet. She talks too much, smiles too easily, and doesn’t understand the meaning of personal space. Worst of all, she’s staying in my house for the summer, turning my carefully guarded world upside down.
I know I should keep my distance. People like her don’t stay, and I’ve had my fill of being left behind. But the more time I spend with her, the harder it is to remember why I built these walls in the first place. She’s getting under my skin—into my heart—and making me want things I’ve spent years trying to avoid.
Falling for Willow would be a mistake. She’s a free bird, and I’m the anchor she’s desperate to escape. But every time she looks at me, I can’t help but What if she’s not the one who’s meant to fly? What if, this time, I'm meant to soar?
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
PROLOGUE
Willow
Ten Years Old
Honey Creek, Illinois
May
Chicken patty Thursdays were my favorite days at school because the lunch lady always gave us cheesy Bosco Sticks, too. She’d give me an extra one because I once told her I liked her hairnet and thought she had pretty green eyes. My eyes were brown, so I always thought they were boring. Not a lot of people had green ones.
If I could ever be born again, I’d want green eyes.
“All right, class, we are going to head to the cafeteria for lunch, featuring some special guests,” Mrs. Robinson announced as she stood from her desk. We all lined up, and I was able to be the line leader. Whenever a person was a line leader, you got an extra star to put on your desk name tag, and I had so many stickers that I wasn’t sure I even had space for another star.
Dad said I was good at getting the stars because I was a star, but that was just because Dad thought my sisters and I were the brightest girls in the whole wide world.
As we walked to the cafeteria, my best friend Anna prattled on and on about how she thought dolphins were the best animals ever, and I listened to everything she said because that was what best friends did.
“Do you think when we get older, we can get a baby dolphin as a pet?” Anna asked me as she pulled her hair back into a ponytail, using the pink scrunchie I gave her last week for her birthday. It had a little dolphin charm on it, too. I called her Phins because of her love for dolphins, and she called me Otto because of my love for otters.
“We can, and we’ll buy a house by the water so we can have otters, too,” I said.
Anna and I had pretty much everything in common, and a few months ago, we’d decided that instead of getting married and having kids, we’d build two houses next to each other and raise animals after we spent most of our lives traveling the world. Ricky, the jerk in our class, said we’d grow up to be lonely cat ladies, but I didn’t think people could be alone if they had cats.
Besides, animals were nicer than people most of the time. People made me cry sometimes. Animals never did.
Except for Ms. Hollows’s dog, Mikey, who bit my ankle when I was running down the street. Then again, it wasn’t Mikey’s fault. He was just a little too excited. I’d been too excited before, too, to the point where I cried. Maybe humans cried when too excited, and animals bit.
We all had our things.
My oldest sister, Avery, never cried, though. She was tougher than me and our other sister, Yara. Once, I heard Dad tell Avery that it was okay to cry sometimes. She told him he was wrong.
Maybe I cried enough for us both. Avery always said I was a crybaby. But that was the thing about my heart—it felt a lot of everything all the time, no matter how I tried to stop it from feeling big and little things.
The moment my class stepped into the cafeteria, my feet froze. Everyone behind me in line dashed past me with big smiles as they rushed over to the surprises sitting in the space already.
My tummy hurt as my eyes stung with tears welling up.
I gripped the sleeve of my shirt and held it tight in the palm of my hand as I glanced around at the space. Even Phins had sprinted off toward her mama and hugged her tightly. She did look back at me with a sad face and waved me over to join them, but I didn’t want to.
Mrs. Lane frowned toward me before quickly averting her gaze. She must’ve still been upset with me from when I dared Anna to climb a tree, and she ended up falling out of it. She got three stitches from that. I felt pretty bad, and Mrs. Lane gave me a good talking-to, telling me I was too rowdy with her Anna.
Sometimes she scolded me like a mama, but she wasn’t my mama.
I didn’t have one of those.
Before I could turn to Mrs. Robinson to ask if I could go to the bathroom so I could cry alone, I noticed Dad standing to my left with a bouquet and a pink bow tie on.
Dad hated pink, but I figured he wore it for me because I gave it to him as a gift last Christmas.
That made me want to cry, too.
I dashed over to him and wrapped my arms around him. I didn’t want to cry, but I couldn’t help it. How could I be both happy and sad at the same time? How could my tears mean more than one thing at the very same moment? How could I be so happy to have a dad and so sad not to have a mama?