Page 76 of Once Upon a Boyband
I find myself leaning toward him, shifting my arm out and forward, so his fingers can move up, past my elbow, sending shivers of sensation dancing over my skin.
“Did you always want to be a vet?” he asks.
The question gives me pause. Weirdly, I’m not sure anyone has ever asked me that before.
“I don’t know, actually,” I say. “I was always considering it, I think, because of Dad. And I’ve always liked animals, so…I guess I probably did?”
“Really?” he presses. “You never thought about doing anything else?”
“No,” but my voice doesn’t sound the least bit convincing. “I didn’t. Not anything that…” My words trail off as I think about the piles and piles of journals I started filling when I was in middle school. Poems. Snatches of conversations. In high school, I started using my dad’s old laptop and graduated to actual stories.
I was never quite bold enough to call myself a writer, but when the world felt scary or hard or overwhelming, writing was always the thing that made me feel better. Pouring my heart into creating something new.
“Laney, you can’tnotfinish that sentence,” Adam says. “Not anything that…what? What else did you think about doing?”
I groan. “No! Don’t make me say it out loud. It was never anything serious. Becoming a vet was a very practical choice, and I’m very good at my job. I like animals. It makes sense.”
“Okay. Good on you for making a practical choice. But what else did youthinkabout doing?”
I lift my hand to cover my face. I have no idea why I’m so embarrassed about this, but then, of course I’m embarrassed. I’ve never actually admitted this to anyone. Honestly, I haven’t thought about it in years. It was a silly daydream—never anything I took too seriously.
Adam’s hand curls around my wrist, but he doesn’t tug it away. He just holds it, his thumb rubbing a slow circle across the inside of my forearm. “You don’t have to tell me,” he says, his voice soft and gentle. “But I’d like to know.”
I spread two fingers apart and peek out with one eye. “You have to promise not to laugh.”
“I promise,” he says without hesitation.
I finally drop my hand, but Adam doesn’t let it go, instead giving me a tiny squeeze of encouragement.
“I used to write,” I say.
Adam’s brow furrows. “Why would I laugh at that?”
“Because I mostly just wrote fanfiction.” I admit this last part without fully thinking about the consequences, but then Adam’s eyes glimmer with an unspoken question, and I know before he opens his mouth what he’s going to ask.
“Fanfiction, huh?”
“Did I say fanfiction? I meant just…regular fiction. About totally made-up people who only ever lived inside my brain.”
“Nope. I don’t think that’s what you said.”
I close my eyes and press my lips together. “Don’t ask me, Adam. Please don’t ask.”
“Oh, you know I’m going to ask,” he says, his smile stretching wider and wider.
I tug my hand out of his grip and shimmy backward, inching my way up the bed. “You can’t make me tell you. I’ll run.”
He lifts an eyebrow. “Pretty sure I could catch you.”
“You don’t know that. Maybe I ran track in high school. Or cross country. I could bevery fast.”
He gives me a dubious expression. “I’ll take my chances.”
I swear under my breath, and Adam chuckles. “Who did you write your fanfiction about, Laney?”
I quickly crawl toward the head of the bed—Adam cannot make me answer that question—but he’s right behind me, wrapping an arm around my waist and tugging me against him. He’s gentle—so gentle—and I’m positive I could get away from him with very little effort if I wanted to. But I love the game of him chasing me, and I let out a little squeal as he rolls me onto my back, pinning my arms over my head and holding them there with one hand. He’s hovering over me now, his blue eyes flashing with heat and hunger.
“Tell me who,” he says.
