Page 65 of Landon & Shay: Part One

Landon:Two different sets of lips, Chick.

Jesus, take the wheel.

My stomach flipped and turned as I read his words over and over again. A slight tingle found its way between my thighs, and I tried my best to ignore it.

Me:You’re so vulgar.

Landon:And you’re so perfectly neat.

Me:Shouldn’t you be sleeping?

Landon:Shouldn’t you?

Touché.

Landon:I can come pick you up now if you want. We can practice at my place.

Me:Probably not a good idea.

Landon:Some of the best ideas are the bad ones. Obviously, neither of us can sleep tonight. What do you have to lose?

Me:My mind apparently.

Landon:We don’t even have to rehearse. I was only half kidding about the kissing thing, anyway, trying to get under your skin. We can just talk. Or not. We could just sit in the same room, not saying shit at all.

I glanced over to my sleeping cousin and swallowed hard. WWED—what would Eleanor do? Well, for starters, she’d tell me to go to sleep. She’d say a tired brain isn’t a good brain to make decisions with. She’d talk about how terrible Landon was and his history of being an awful person.

She’d tell me I was too good for him. She’d tell me to not give in to the advances. She’d tell me to stand strong and tell him no. But wise Eleanor wasn’t available in that moment. She was sound asleep with not a care in the world. She didn’t have the ability to tell me anything, so I listened to my heart instead of my head.

My stupid, sensitive heart.

I texted him the address, and then I held my breath.

18

Landon

I’d readthe love language book twice already.

Even highlighted some crap in it.

Ever since, I’d been doing my best to look at Shay in a way I hadn’t before, and to my surprise, I was seeing parts of her that reminded me a bit of myself.

I’d have to thank Raine for sliding me Shay’s number, even though she’d said she hadn’t meant to text me the seven digits. Raine couldn’t help herself from wanting to play the fairy godmother to the beauty and the beast.

Shay was timid when I picked her up from the address she’d texted me. I hadn’t ever seen her as quiet as she was when she climbed into my car. We drove ten minutes without her saying a word. Normally, within seconds, she was throwing some kind of insult my way, but that night, she was mute.

I wanted to ask her if she was all right, but based on the fact that she was sitting in a car with a boy she could hardly stand well after midnight, it was clear that she wasn’t.

I wondered what the storm inside her head looked like. I wondered if her thunder rumbled as loud as mine, if her lightning struck her soul repeatedly, if she drowned in her own thoughts.

As I pulled up to my house, I put the car in park and went to open the driver’s door.

“No,” she whispered, her voice low.

“What?”

“I don’t want to get out. I don’t want to go into your house.”

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