Page 16 of I Was Always Yours (RCA: Royal Crown Academy)

…a little

…a lot

…passionately

…madly.

It’s just a game. It means nothing.

We’re just two young kids.

And yet just like that, he changes the physiology of my heartbeat.

Chapter 5

Sixtine, age 10

August

It’s Phoenix and Astor’s birthday next week, and I’m anxious about what to get them.

Especially Phoenix.

This is the first time I’m giving him something and I want it to be amazing.

For my birthday last year, he and his parents bought me a new saddle for Marlow.But the real gift he gave me was carving a design into the trunk of my treehouse.

He’d drawn a few options for me on paper, and ultimately, I’d picked one with all three of our names because it was their treehouse as much as it was mine.

He’d transferred it onto the tree trunk and carved it into the wood with one of his father’s hunting knives.

Now every time I go to my treehouse, I brush my hand over our names, happy to see proof of us permanently etched there.

I want to give him something that makes him equally happy, and it probably should be something I can do with my hands, but I’m not sure what.

“What’s that worried look on your face for?” Astor asks, from the sea of pillows he’s sitting on in the corner of the treehouse.

We rode our bikes home from school and took cover in the treehouse when it started raining.

“Nothing, just thinking about your birthday and what to get you.” I say, anxiously chewing at my nail bed and adding, “And Nix.”

“Don’t pretend you’re nervous about what to get me, bug.” He counters, smirking at me. “You’ll buy me new Xbox games and I’ll love them. You’re worried about what to get Phoenix specifically.”

I feign disbelief, “That’s not true.”

“You have a crush on him,” he insists.

I roll my eye in faux disgust. “Oh my god, Astor, ew. I do not like him.”

“I’m your best friend and he’s my brother. Why won’t you tell me the truth?” He asks, and I detect a note of hurt in his voice.

“Because you’d, you’d…tell him.” I whisper, darting a look up at him through my lashes.

“Never,” he swears, before his expression stretches into a smile and he raises his brow suggestively, “So you do like him?”

I nod, but barely. “A little bit.”

I can’t believe I just said that. It’s the first time I’ve ever admitted it or said the words out loud. Part of me feels good about being honest, the other part just wants to stuff the words back down my throat and forget about it.

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