Beauty and the Running Back by Colleen Masters

Author:Colleen Masters [Masters, Colleen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hearts Collective Publishing
Published: 2016-07-17T21:00:00+00:00

Chapter Two

* * *

We spend the next hour darting through the thick, shadowy woods that blanket the town, slowly making our way home. Barely a word is spoken by either of us as we make our way along, pausing whenever we hear a siren in the distance. By the time we stumble through the brush and land in our backyard, I’m covered in scrapes and dirt. Emerson, for his part, seems to be mostly unscathed. But of course he is.

The lights are all out as we tiptoe into my childhood home—a stately but relatively modest Tudor house. Dad and Deborah must be asleep by now. It is, after all, past two in the morning. Hopefully Dad won’t ask too many questions about what I’m doing home in the morning—I told him I’d be sleeping over at Riley’s. But he’s not exactly the type to check up, and I doubt that Deborah even goes through the motions of keeping tabs on Emerson anymore. With a little bit of luck, we’ll be in the clear.

Emerson and I slip through the back doors and plod up the carpeted staircase, skipping the creaky stair, coming at last to the second story landing. There are three bedrooms in my dad’s house: the master bedroom just off the landing, which he and Deborah are sharing now, and two smaller rooms at either side of the hall. My room is down to the right, Emerson’s is to the left. He doesn’t even bother saying goodnight before turning away and slipping into his room. With a sigh, I trudge back to my own quarters at the opposite end of the hall.

Closing the door gently behind me, I belly flop onto my bed, burying my face in the fluffy pillow and fighting the urge to scream. I can’t sort through everything that happened between Emerson and I tonight. Between the tense moments during Seven Minutes of Heaven to his accidental but steamy caress after I took a tumble off the trellis, I’m totally at a loss. Tonight was the first time we’ve seen each other outside of school and home since he and Deborah moved in. And it’s certainly the first time anything so...charged has passed between us.

I flip over onto my back, staring up at the ceiling. The glow-in-the-dark stars I put up as a kid still hang overhead, despite my near-adult status. With a pang of heartache, I realize that Emerson and I are bound to part ways once we turn eighteen and graduate high school. I’ll never know what could have been between us, if our parents hadn’t ruined everything by getting together. Then again, he probably never would have even learned my name if not for them. So I guess I should be somewhat grateful. Emphasis on somewhat.

Knowing that I’ll never fall asleep with all this tension built up inside of me, I roll over and slide open the top drawer of my night table. There, hidden among a jumble of makeup and jewelry, is a tiny device disguised to look like a tube of lipstick.

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