The Moments We Made Ours (Swift Rivers #2)

Prologue – Skip This Part

Prologue

Maisey

SKIP THIS PART

Performed by Kelly Clarkson

FOURTEEN YEARS AGO

HIM: Where are you? Thought we were celebrating by finishing The Hunger Games in the tree house?

HER: Not tonight.

HIM: What? Why?

Minutes passed.

HIM: Maise?

More minutes passed.

HIM: That’s it. I’m coming over.

I wound the tire swing as tight as I could before letting go. The branches and leaves of the oak tree became a dark whirl as I spun, wishing with all my might that I could actually take off and sail somewhere else. Anywhere else.

In the shadowy twilight descending over our small town in the foothills of the Sierra Mountains, the crickets sang in full chorus, the frogs croaked their symphony by the river, and the chicken coops murmured with the soft rustle of the roosts settling down.

Yet, I could still hear my parents over it all.

The sound of their argument streamed through the screen door, reaching out to me like a specter stretching its hands.

My stomach clenched, as it always did when they fought.

It was the same argument—money.

At least, this time, it wasn’t about the boatload they were spending to fix me or the cost of my classes at the Western Riding School.

Instead, they were arguing about the summer acting camp Chelsea wanted to attend.

If she wasn’t allowed to go, I’d feel even more selfish than normal for hogging all the extra money our family had available.

Mom was trying to squeak out the funds, but Dad was digging in his heels.

He didn’t want Chelsea to go, and it wasn’t just because of the exorbitant fee.

Dad didn’t think it was healthy for my stunningly beautiful sister to want a famous life so badly that it had already carved itself into her soul.

I wasn’t one to judge. I already had things carved into my soul too.

Not the least of which was how ugly I was compared to her.

It was like, when we’d been born, she’d been granted all the beauty, while I’d been handed all the deformities.

The alarm on my phone went off, and I shoved my hand into the front pocket of my oversized hoodie to silence it, hoping Mom hadn’t heard. But that wasn’t to be my luck. The argument in the house stopped briefly, and the kitchen floor creaked as footsteps crossed the cracked linoleum.

Mom called out from the screen door, “It’s time to come inside, Maisey.”

“I know. I’m coming,” I called back.

She didn’t wait. She knew I’d come in. She knew I’d do the right thing.

Except today, I really didn’t want to.

I let the swing continue to unwind as tears leaked out and traveled down my cheeks. I didn’t want to go in. I didn’t want to put on the stupid facemask. I didn’t want to go from ugly Maisey to hideously freaky Maisey.

I’d thought I’d finally broken free of the reverse-pull headgear, only to be told today I had to go another summer wearing it. So instead of celebrating the trashing of the face mask with Beckett in his treehouse tonight and finishing our latest book, I’d be stuck inside again. Alone.

I’d been giddy at the idea of reading with Beckett at night for the first time since we’d started reading together four years ago. It had felt…romantic…hopeful… Which was stupid, because Beckett had never looked at me that way. We were friends. Nothing more.

Suddenly, the tire swing jerked to a stop, and the screech that tore from me was as horrendous as my mouth. My heart slammed against my ribs as I twisted around, panic flaring. The wild rhythm only quickened when I saw who it was.

Usually, I heard Beckett land after jumping over the barbed-wire fence that separated our two small farms on the edge of downtown Swift Rivers—or just Rivers, as the locals affectionately called it.

But tonight, I’d missed the sound, too distracted by my parents’ argument and the mess of thoughts twisting through my head.

I had to look up—way up—to meet his eyes.

Beckett had shot up nearly three inches over the winter, and the rest of him hadn’t quite caught up yet.

He was downright skinny these days, despite the lean muscles he’d built from endless chores on his family’s goat farm and the long hours he put in at the Harrington Ranch, where his dad worked full time.

Beckett’s dark-brown hair was on the longer side, curling about his ears and around his neck. He was constantly pushing the floppy mass out of his eyes—deep, warm, chocolate eyes that rested under thick brows he’d gotten from his dad.

“Thought we were celebrating,” Beckett said. His voice had changed two years ago. Deep now, it sounded like a man’s voice, even when he still looked like a scraggily fourteen-year-old.

My body hadn’t started to change at all.

When Chelsea had been twelve, like me, she’d already been wearing a bra and had started her period.

My body looked like I was still eight. How was that fair?

But then again, Chelsea would say it wasn’t fair that I hogged all our family’s money simply because my jaw stuck out too much.

Beckett studied me closely. And even though the sky had slid just beyond the hills, and the oak tree cast shadows over me, there was still enough light for him to see the glimmer of tears streaking down my face.

“Maise?” Worry coated his voice.

Beckett and Fallon were the only ones I didn’t mind calling me “Maise.” They said it softly, like it actually meant something good.

Everyone else turned it into a joke. Once the kids in school found out it was the Native word for corn, they started calling me Corny the Deformed Corncob.

And Chelsea calling me Cornlette hadn’t helped, no matter how sweetly she intended it.

“I have to go inside, Beckett.”

And with that handful of words, he got what I meant.

“Shit. The orthodontist wants you to wear the facemask for longer?”

Beckett liked cussing these days. It was as if being a few weeks away from graduating eighth grade and moving on to high school had suddenly made it essential that he become familiar with every curse word in existence.

“Yep,” I said with an extra pop on the P. “Another entire summer where I’ll be stuck indoors after seven p.m.”

“You don’t have to be stuck inside, Maisey.”

Technically, I didn’t. No one said I couldn’t leave the house with the facemask on. The hideous contraption, slowly shifting my jaw into a more “appropriate” position, didn’t require darkness and solitude, but I didn’t want anyone to see me in it.

I didn’t even want my family to see it.

After I put on the mask, I hid in my room, where I devoured the books Beckett had helped me master, until sleep found me.

Beckett rested his hands on my shoulders, and even at twelve, even though my hormones hadn’t really found me yet, I felt something deep inside me swoosh at his touch.

It had been that way since the very first time we’d touched.

From the moment I’d stuck my hand out to help him up after he’d fallen out of a tree and landed in our yard.

It felt like…coming home after a long trip.

Like…I’d found the place I truly belonged.

But tonight, the gentleness I always received from Beckett only made the tears flow harder.

“Don’t cry, Maise. Please don’t cry.” His voice was thick, choked with emotions that mirrored mine.

“I hate being me. I hate my jaw and my teeth and my parents fighting over the money I’m costing them.”

Beckett yanked me out of the swing and wrapped his arms around me.

I was so short compared to him after his growth spurt that my nose ended up in his armpit.

I didn’t care. He didn’t smell like the other stinky boys at school, who hadn’t figured out how to use deodorant yet.

Beckett smelled like bonfire smoke and pine trees.

Like some of my best childhood memories.

Sometimes it felt like the only memories that really mattered were the ones made after he moved in next door six years ago.

“I refuse to stand by and let anyone, including you, hate on my Maisey-girl,” he growled.

And my sick little preteen heart swooped again. I loved it when Beckett called me his Maisey-girl, even though I wasn’t really his.

He’d actually been “going out” with Chelsea’s frenemy, Delilah, most of the school year. But after his dad’s fiancée had broken up with Kurt and taken off for South America, Beckett had broken up with Delilah and said he was over dating, just like his dad.

Beckett tugged gently at my plain, long brown hair. I wished I could wear it in the fishtail braid Fallon had taught me, but when I pulled it back, my jaw and teeth were all anyone focused on. At least with my hair down, I could hide behind it.

My second alarm went off, and it made me want to cry even harder.

I didn’t ever want to leave Beckett’s arms. But the reminder warned me I was dangerously close to not putting on the facemask in time for it to do its job.

My orthodontist told me that every minute I was late was why I had to wear it for longer than they’d expected.

Except, I’d rarely been late. I’d been diligent for four years.

Four years… It felt like a lifetime already.

“We can still camp out in the treehouse and finish The Hunger Games trilogy this summer. I don’t care about the facemask. You know I won’t laugh at you.”

“You haven’t ever seen me in it, Beckett.

It’s so…” I shook my head. I couldn’t even explain it.

With the front of it suctioned to my forehead, the contraption hanging down over my nose and mouth and hooking to my teeth, I looked like a robot gone wrong.

A mistake not even fit for the Island of Misfit Toys. “It makes me even uglier.”

“You’re not ugly.” He said it fiercely, as if he were swearing. Like he meant it. “When I met you, it was your green eyes I noticed first. They made you look like…an avenging angel or something.”

I missed his embarrassment at the compliment in the midst of my self-indulgent whine.