Page 32 of Landon & Shay: Part One

Motion.

Oh my gosh.

Do that again.

Then, he pulled up the bottom of his long-sleeved T-shirt and revealed his toned body. He dabbed the corners of his mouth with his shirt, using it as a napkin as I counted the abs on his torso.

One, two, skip a few…

Landon always wore long-sleeved shirts that were tight enough to highlight his toned arms. If he moved his arms in just the right way, you could swear his biceps were waving at you.

A devilish smirk curved his lips. “If you keep staring, I’ll have to charge you.”

I clenched my thighs together even tighter as I shifted my stare away from him.

It wasn’t fair.

Boys his age weren’t supposed to look like that. Landon made it perfectly clear that there was nothing in the world for him to be embarrassed about when it came to his body. No teenager had the right to be as fit and toned as he was—other than Chad Michael Murray.

I cursed the heavens for giving Landon a Chad Michael Murray body.

I stayed seated as long as I could before I grew too flustered and had to stand and leave the table. I could feel his satisfied grin as I walked away, too.

What was supposed to have been a bet about falling in love quickly shifted into the realm of Landon and me falling deeper into our hate. Well, at least that was what was happening for me. I couldn’t speak on his behalf, because I didn’t care what he thought. I despised him. From the top of my head to the bottom of my feet, I loathed that man.

But still, I didn’t know why my heart kept deciding to skip every now and then whenever he pranked me. Or why he’d cross my mind, and my thighs would ache in desire. Or why my stomach swirled whenever he came my way.

Probably gas.

As Landon’s and my hate deepened, it seemed Mima’s and Dad’s did, too. Each day I came home from school, I’d walk into the house to hear the two of them bickering. Mima was always getting on Dad’s case about one thing or another. Lately, she refused to let the diamond earring fiasco go. Mom even offered to sell them for extra money, but Mima was stern with her words.

“It’s not about the money, Camila. It’s about where he got the money. His small jobs are not enough to pay for something like that. Open your eyes,” Mima scolded.

“How about you mind your own business, Maria?” Dad would snap.

“My daughterismy business,” she’d reply.

I knew Mom felt as if she was caught between the two of them—the love of her life and the woman who’d raised her. If there was one thing that was true about my mother, it was the fact that she was a peacekeeper. She didn’t like conflict, and she did her best to tiptoe around people in order to not hurt anyone’s feelings. All she cared about was making the people she loved happy.

Mima, though? Mima was the complete opposite. While my mother was a mouse, my grandmother was a lion, and she wasn’t shy about people hearing her roar. She faced conflict head-on with no remorse. She wasn’t afraid to speak her mind, and I figured that came from the struggle of having always been silenced by my grandfather when he was still alive. Once he passed, Mima promised to never bite her tongue for a man again, and she had held on to that promise, too. Unfortunately, that meant my father wasn’t saved from her spitfire. She wasn’t ever afraid to speak up, even if her words burned Dad.

It was hard for me to listen to them fight, because I loved them all so much.

I just wished, over time, they could find a happy medium.

That was why I did my best to be a good girl. There was already so much tension in my home, and I didn’t want to add any more stress to the situation, or add more stress to Mom’s already heavily laden shoulders. I was a perfect little princess. I didn’t drink. I didn’t do drugs. I never, ever skipped school. My grades were all As, and if there was ever extra credit, I was all over it. I was a star student, an easy kid to raise, all because I knew my house was too fragile to withhold any more struggles.

My parents never had to worry about what their daughter was doing—because I was always doing the right thing.

Whenever there was a big argument in the house, I’d escape to my bedroom and close the door behind me. I was certain everyone would clear their heads soon enough, but until then, I’d fall into my own world—my world of fiction.

In many ways, I was my father’s daughter. Every bit of creativity I had in my bones, I received from that man. When he wasn’t getting in trouble, he was an amazing storyteller, and whenever I felt lost in one of my writing ventures, I knew he was the one to go to for help.

He understood story structures and how characters worked in ways I only dreamed of. It was because of him that I got involved in not only writing but the acting world, too. There was no part of me that had a strong desire to be an actress, but Dad convinced me if I were to step into all aspects of storytelling, I’d be able to understand characters for my scripts even more.

“There’s power in looking at things from all angles. That’s what the masters do,” he’d say.

And all I ever wanted to do was be a master screenwriter like my father—minus his flaws. I had my own flaws to deal with; I didn’t need his mixing into them.

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