Page 12 of It's Not Home Without You

“I had already told you, Nikki, that I’m not interested in you like that. Now could you please get out of my room?” I was a polite person, but she was testing me.

“Max, everyone is interested in me like that.” She leaned forward on her hands and knees, giving me a clear view of her tits, but again, I felt nothing.

“Nikki, I said get out of my fucking room. I don’t want to date you, I don’t want to be your boyfriend, and I have no interest in fucking you.” She flinched at my tone. Nikkihadn’t expected me to talk to her that way. This didn’t surprise me; I was the nice one, it was true, but I also wasn’t a pushover.

“All for that freshman whore.” She scoffed and walked out of my room before I could tell her off for calling Freya a whore.

Freya

Camping was officially over. The green sign said Sunny Pines was twenty-six miles out. In twenty-six miles, I would be back to my own personal hell. If homeschooling were an option, I would have done it in a heartbeat, but Grandpa didn’t have the resources, and I wasn’t a coward.

I loved Aunt Pauletta and Uncle Rob, but they were a handful and a little nutty. Every year we went down to the Dells, where they owned a cabin, and stayed with them for a few days. After seeing my scratched face and my refusal to speak about it, Grandpa made the arrangements for us to go for a quick visit. Since it wasn’t warm enough for a dip in the lake, and nowhere near cold enough for sledding, I mostly sat in the hot tub thinking of all the ways my life sucked, but how I wouldn’t change a thing because my grandpa was the best. As long as I had him, things weren’t so bad.

“Well, I’ll be damned.”

Grandpa’s voice made me look up, and I had to agree I’d be damned.Damnedindeed.

Our place looked like the set of a Disney movie—that’s if the princess lived in a trailer. There were flowers all around our home. There was even a little path created with vases full of pink roses. If that wasn’t shocking enough, the sight of Maximilian Dunnett arranging another vase full of flowers was enough to render both my grandpa and me speechless.

“I’ll get rid of him.” I rushed out of the car before Grandpa could. It didn’t take a genius to figure out what happened on Monday, then coming home to our place looking like a funeral home with all the flowers. I wasn’t a huge fan of flowers. They were pretty, but it wasn’t my style. I’m not saying the sentiment wasn’t cute, but it wasn’t me.

“What are you doing here?” I walked up to Max, who was looking sheepishly at me, and too bad for him, I was still so mad that I didn’t find him cute.

Not one bit.

Not at all.

“You look beautiful,” he said, and I had to fight a smile.

“What are you doing here?”

“Can we talk for a second?”

I looked around, trying not to cringe. “What do you think, just because you have money to redecorate my place, I’m supposed to forgive you?”

“Look, Freya, I know you’re mad at me and you probably hate me, but I swear Nikki isn’t anything to me. She was never my girlfriend.”

I kept looking at all the arrangements he had set up just so I wouldn’t have to look at him.

“How much allowance do you get?” I dubiously asked.He really did a number on my place. It smelled like Mrs. Carson’s garden, and Ihatedgoing to her garden. I turned to look at Max. His face was red with embarrassment, and then I turned to look at my grandpa who was making himself busy getting our stuff from the trunk.

We didn’t even take much with us.

“I might have cleared Mrs. Riordan’s shelves.” Great, now I felt a little bad about robbing other people from getting their flower fix.

“They arelovely… thank you,” I lied, hopping it sounded sincere.

“Freya, I like you… I more than like you, and I would hate for things to end before they even begin, so would it be possible for me to have another shot?”

I saw my grandpa walking toward us, having decided he had given us enough time. “Can we talk tomorrow? I’m tired from the drive.”

Max’s face fell for a second, but he composed himself quickly.

“Bye, Freya.” He waved, walking to his car.

Dammit,I cursed myself. I tried being mad and unaffected, but I couldn’t do it. No one had ever done anything this nice for me or cared enough to apologize sincerely. It meant more than he knew—even if I hated flowers.

“Maximilian,” I shouted after him. He turned around slowly, cautiously waiting for what I would say. “I like you too,” I admitted.

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