Chapter 9
9
BEVERLY, 1997
15 years old
Valentine’s Day had never been something I cared about. To me, it was just another day. Meanwhile, other girls at school got flowers, chocolates, teddy bears—grand gestures wrapped in pink and red, dripping with romance.
Tiffany had been gushing about the bouquet her boyfriend got her, showing off each rose like it was made of diamonds. “Look at the card!” she said, flipping her hair like she was in a shampoo commercial. “It’s handwritten. Isn’t he the sweetest?”
Everyone oohed and aahed , like it was the greatest love story ever told. I smiled politely but didn’t say much. It didn’t bother me. Not really. My life wasn’t a romantic comedy, and I was fine with that. Valentine’s Day was just another day on the calendar.
A day I had to survive without rolling my eyes or sighing when Tiffany declared, for the hundredth time, that her boyfriend was ‘sooooo perfect.’
I hadn’t expected flowers. Not from anyone, and definitely not from Blake. We didn’t do things like that.
We weren’t the kind of friends who exchanged gifts wrapped in neat bows or wrote each other heartfelt notes. If we gave each other anything, it came in the form of stolen moments, quiet understandings, a shared glance across a room that said everything words couldn’t.
So, when I found the book sitting on my bed that afternoon, I stared at it for a long time.
It wasn’t wrapped. No note. No explanation. No heart-shaped anything. Just a book, placed carefully in the center of my pillow like it had been waiting for me all day.
I knew it was from him before I even picked it up.
I crossed the room slowly, brushing my fingers over the edges. It was secondhand—the spine cracked from being read too many times. I turned it over, reading the title.
The Secret History by Donna Tartt.
A laugh slipped out of me. “You’re unbelievable,” I muttered, shaking my head as I flipped open the cover.
Blake had been on a relentless mission to turn me into a reader. For months, he’d been slipping books onto my desk or dropping them in my lap, even as I groaned and rolled my eyes.
“You’ll like this one,” he’d say, in that quiet, steady way of his. “Just read a little.”
I always refused. It wasn’t that I didn’t like reading—I did. Just not the way Blake did. Not in the way that made someone disappear into a story for hours, completely unaware of the world around them. Not in the way that made you forget to eat, forget to sleep, forget that real life even existed outside the pages.
That was his thing.
Me? I liked magazines. Vogue , mostly, with its glossy pages filled with clothes I’d never wear and places I’d never go. Once, I’d even skimmed through a Playboy my dad got in the mail—out of pure curiosity—hidden behind an old Seventeen so no one would catch me flipping through it.
It wasn’t exactly high literature, but it made sense to me: short, bite-sized stories, and…well, pictures .
But this? A whole novel? It felt like a challenge.
One Blake knew I wouldn’t back down from.
I skimmed through the first few pages lazily, flipping ahead when I got bored. Then something caught my attention.
A single word. Underlined in pencil.
And another, a few pages later.
Then another.
At first, I thought it was a mistake. A previous owner’s habit, maybe. But as I kept reading, the pattern became obvious. The underlined words were too deliberate to be random. They were carefully chosen, deliberately highlighted, leading somewhere as if they held some kind of secret meaning.
It was a message , I realized. His way of forcing me to read.
My heart quickened as I flipped back to the beginning. I had to go back, piece them together, whisper them under my breath like solving a puzzle. I scanned each line, searching for the first underlined word. It didn’t take long.
are
A slow smile spread across my face. I kept going.
you
The markings were subtle, so faint I almost thought I was imagining them. But they were there, forming a sentence, one word at a time.
paying
My fingers traced the faint line, my breath hitching in anticipation.
attention
That was the first message. Are you paying attention ?
I laughed softly, shaking my head.
Of course, that would be the first message. It was so him . I stared at the words, my heart doing something stupid in my chest. It was like unwrapping a present, layer by layer, word by word.
I smiled to myself as I continued to read the pages, my fingers brushing the margins where each word was highlighted.
you love to read
I rolled my eyes at that one. A lie, obviously, because I didn’t love to read. But it was the way Blake pulled me in.
I grinned when I realized what he had done.
Sure, I could’ve cheated. I could’ve skimmed through and collected all the marked words, piecing together whatever message he had hidden inside, focusing on the underlined words without actually reading. But I couldn’t. I wasn’t a cheater.
I wasn’t going to skip ahead and ruin the game.
So I kept reading, searching for more.
you
I grinned like a fool.
make
My heart fluttered as I turned each page, my mind racing to decipher the hidden message he had left for me. Each time I found a marked word, I hesitated, wondering if I was getting closer to uncovering the sentence that had been carefully constructed just for me.
terrible
life
choices
I snorted. “Wow. Rude.” But I kept reading.
like
ignoring
my
recommendations
I laughed. It was the kind of gesture he made that made me both want to roll my eyes and smile at the same time.
But I wasn’t done.
There was more.
So much more.
I read every page, every chapter, letting the story unfold naturally, waiting for the underlined words to guide me toward whatever he wanted to say. It took me nearly a week to get to it. Seven full days of dragging my eyes across pages that sometimes bored me, sometimes frustrated me, sometimes made me question what exactly I was supposed to be getting out of this.
But when I found the words, my breath caught in my throat.
I
wish
I swallowed, a little breathless now.
I
could
I sat up straight, clutching the book in my hands, my mind racing with questions. You wish you could wha t?
What was he trying to say?
I read as fast as I could, searching for more underlined words. But there weren’t any. No more clues. I didn’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t that . I stared at the book, my heart beating a little too fast. What are you trying to tell me, Blake ?
I was so lost in my thoughts that I didn’t hear the soft click at first. It was a sound I knew all too well—Mom’s Polaroid camera. My gaze flicked up, though I didn’t need to lift my eyes fully to know who had taken the shot.
His presence was as familiar to me as my own breath.
Blake watched the picture in his hand as it slowly developed, a smirk tugging at the corner of his lips.
I could feel the heat of the moment sink into my skin.
“Enjoying the book?” he asked, leaning casually against the doorframe, one hand buried in the pocket of his hoodie.
“ Enjoying ?” I held up the book, narrowing my eyes. “I’m about two seconds away from throwing this across the room because you’ve left me on the worst cliffhanger.”
His lips curved into a slow, knowing smile. “Guess you’ll have to wait for the next book.”
I gaped at him. “You can’t be serious.” He shrugged, and I scoffed, throwing myself back onto my pillows. “You’re evil.”
Another small shrug. “You keep reading, though.”
I scowled at him because he was right.
And he knew it.
“Blake…” I started, unsure whether I was irritated or intrigued. I couldn’t decide if I was annoyed or flattered or maybe a little nervous? I was caught somewhere between all those things.
He was too calm, too knowing, like this was all part of his grand plan. A grand plan I had no choice but to follow.
Blake looked far too pleased with himself. “Don’t look at me like that,” he said. “I’m just getting started.”
And he was.
Because a week later, another book appeared on my bed.
Each one filled with carefully chosen words, secret messages that felt like little pieces of him scattered across the pages.
I don’t know when it stopped being just about the messages and started being about the books themselves. But Blake knew me. He knew I wasn’t a cheater. He knew I wouldn’t skim through just to find his words—I’d actually read them. I read every page, every chapter, even when the messages were slow to come.
I wish I could tell you things
That had been the full message.
It made me giddy.
I wanted to devour a hundred books in one day.
A week later, another book appeared on my bed.
Then another.
It became a thing.
I never asked him to do it. He never mentioned it. But every few weeks, a book would show up. And I would read it.
Because I wanted to.
I like the way you hum when you read
That one made me blush. I hadn’t even realized I did that.
I wish I was braver
That one made my heart stop.
I stared at it for what felt like forever, my fingers brushing over the faint pencil mark. I read it again, whispering the words under my breath like I was trying to memorize them.
I wish I was braver.
Braver for what?
I never asked him.
I probably should have, but something told me the answer would change everything, and I wasn’t ready for that. Not yet.
So, I read his words and kept them close, tucked them into the quiet spaces of my heart where no one else could see them.