Prologue – Skip This Part #2
“Guys don’t kiss eyes! They kiss mouths.” I waved at my teeth covered in braces. “And this hideous mouth isn’t ever getting kissed.”
“You’re wrong.”
I moved to brush past him, but before I got even a step, Beckett grabbed my arm and hauled me to him. The next thing I knew, he’d placed his perfectly formed, cupid-bow lips on mine. His mouth was warm and insistent, the pressure gentle and yet firm. Shock held me still, and then my body went limp.
Beckett was kissing me.
Beckett.
My Beckett.
He’d given me my first kiss.
And it felt so right. Sweet and gentle and perfect.
The world spun around me just as it had when I’d been on the tire swing, everything beyond us a blurry mirage. It was as if we were in a bubble where nothing could touch us. Where nothing mattered but this—the two of us, at twelve and fourteen, somehow finding our other half.
I couldn’t help the smile that started to replace the frown I’d been wearing since coming home from my appointment. But it was the smile that ruined everything because it allowed my braces to connect with his soft skin.
I felt him flinch.
Felt him try not to jerk back.
But I did it for him, wrenching myself free. My face flamed, and my insides rolled when I saw the blood that appeared on his beautiful lips. Lips I’d stared at for far too many hours in the last year as we’d taken turns reading aloud to each other.
He pushed a knuckle against the cut while his eyes remained locked on mine. I couldn’t read his expression. But I wasn’t sure I needed to.
Disgust. I was disgusted enough for both of us.
He’d done something nice and paid the price. More tears welled. The embarrassment would keep me in my room this summer more than even the stupid mask.
“Maisey, Mom is going to have a coronary if you don’t come in and put on your headgear,” Chelsea said, stepping out onto the small wooden deck at the back of our house.
The last thing I wanted was for Chelsea to find out about this embarrassing situation.
My overprotective big sister would flip out. She already thought my friendship with Beckett was weird.
I fled, whirling around and running up the trio of steps onto the deck, pushing past my beautiful sister with her wavy auburn hair and green eyes and perfect jaw and perfect figure.
I ran through the galley kitchen to my bedroom just beyond it.
I slammed the door and locked it but didn’t flip on the light.
My heart beat wildly again. Those heavenly few seconds with Beckett’s lips pressed against mine disappeared in a sea of humiliation.
Through my open window, my sister’s voice easily carried to me.
“What happened to make Cornlette take off like she’d seen a ghost?” She sounded mad. Like she always did when defending me.
“Nothing,” Beckett said.
“You’re bleeding.”
Silence.
“Did you kiss my sister?” she demanded, and when he still didn’t respond, she continued, “She’s a sixth grader, for heaven’s sake.”
It was the same baffled tone she used when he’d started reading with me when I was eight. Up until then, reading had been yet another thing Chelsea had done with ease that I’d struggled with. I wasn’t stupid, but my grades made it seem like I was.
Everything had changed the day I’d seen Beckett reading a book about horses.
When I’d asked him about it, he’d started reading it to me, and then, he’d had me take a turn.
He’d been patient with my mistakes and never once given up the way everyone else in my life did after a few bumbling sentences.
Ever since then, reading had seemed fun, not only because of the books Beckett chose, but because it meant I had more time with him.
“I was just trying to help,” Beckett finally responded. “She thought no one would ever kiss her.”
“So it was, what? A pity kiss?” My heart fell. My cheeks, that had already been flaming, lit more. “Our poor little Maisey was sad, and you had to step in to help once again? You’re such a sap.”
My entire insides tightened at that word—sap. Beckett had sworn he’d never be a sap like his dad, loving women who didn’t stick.
“You’re such a bitch, Chelsea. You don’t have the first clue about what friends will do for one another.”
My stomach leaped. It wasn’t the first time he’d called her a name like that.
It was the one thing Beckett and I fought over.
He insisted Chelsea wasn’t the defender I’d always seen her as.
But he hadn’t been around when I was five, and the kids on the street made fun of my weird jaw and teeth. She’d thrown rocks at them.
“If it means having to kiss a twelve-year-old, I don’t need friends.” Her tone sounded disgusted, even angry. “If it happens again—”
The rest of her sentence faded away as they moved deeper into the yard. All I could hear was a murmur of voices that sounded uncomfortably like my parents arguing.
When the hum stopped, I could imagine Beckett jumping from the boulder by the chicken coop onto the wooden fence post between the barbed wire dividing our yards. He’d leap like a superhero through the air, land gracefully on his feet, and still end up startling the goats.
And just like in my imagination, the bleat of the herd sounded through the air, followed by Chelsea’s feet pounding up the porch steps.
The noise unfroze me. I didn’t want her to know I’d overheard their conversation.
I didn’t want her telling me that Beckett had only kissed me out of pity while warning me, again, that my crush on Beckett was going to get me hurt.
She’d already told me kids at school made fun of me, not only for my looks, but because of the way I tagged after Beckett like a stray dog.
Like the Hunchback in that animated movie, fawning over the Romani girl.
Beckett was kind to me, but that didn’t mean he was going to fall head over heels in love with me. No one would ever fall for the freak show who’d barely learned to read.
I grabbed the bag with my facemask in it and hurried into the tiny bathroom I shared with my sister.
There was only one thing to do from here—pretend Beckett Romero had never kissed me at all. I’d put the entire memory in a box, lock it away, and forget it had ever happened.
And maybe in a few weeks, I’d be able to look at him again without embarrassment swarming through me like gnats on an apple core.