Page 79 of Promise Me Nothing
I hear a round ofso fucking dopeandholy shit, woman,and evenhow the hell did you learn to do that.
The smile on my face is wide, and I turn to look up to the top, where Wyatt is slowly making his way down the side of the hill by foot, a small smile on his face.
It’s a bittersweet pill when I realize in that moment that the only congratulations I want right now is from him.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Wyatt
I feel like a crazy person.
Like one of those guys you see on TV. There was some show on Netflix recently about a stalker, and the girls I knew in San Francisco were always swooning over it.
I thought they were crazy.
Now I’m the crazy one.
I was in the garage. The one connected to the guesthouse, which faces the path heading down to the beach. I had put on my workout gear. Nothing fancy. A pair of trainers. A cutoff tee. A pair of basketball shorts.
I’d been planning on strapping a pair of gloves on so I could get a workout on the bag I had installed right after I got here. Gotta keep up my workouts even when I’m not near my home gym.
But just as I pulled my gloves out, something caught my eye.
Or I guess, someone.
It was Hannah, jogging along the bicycle path that sits below the main drag. Heading to the path that would take her down to the beach, probably to run in the opposite direction. Back to Lucas’ house.
A nice little one-mile loop, if I’d done the math correctly.
Before I even knew what I was doing, I’d dropped my gloves on a workbench, grabbed my phone, and took off after her.
I can’t explain why. What compelled me. The force that implored me to keep her in my sights.
But I did it. I followed her.
Tried to come up with a way I could ‘bump’ into her on accident. Strike up a conversation. Because she’d been on my mind constantly, and seeing her run by felt like fate.
Only, at the end of the path, she didn’t make a left to jog along The Strand back to Lucas’. She turned right. Away from Hermosa. Into Manhattan Beach. Along the northern stretch of The Strand where we rode our bikes on Friday.
And now, I’ve been running behind her for close to three miles, something I did not prepare myself for, and I’ll still have to run back to my house.
Which is why I feel like a crazy person.
My feet hurt. My back hurts. My lungs ache. The sweat is burning my eyes.
But I keep going.
And I don’t know fucking why.
Okay, so maybe that’s a lie.
There was a moment on Friday night. Some kind of something between us that was… unlike anything I’ve felt before. And now that three days have passed and I haven’t seen her, I feel the need to take advantage of the limited time I’ll have with her. Because I know it will come to an end.
Suddenly, this has become bigger. She’s become more than just Lucas’ long-lost sister. More than just Ivy’s potential donor.
She’s someone I want to know.
When we’d been standing at the top of the dune and she couldn’t find the courage to drop down, her biggest fear had been the group at the bottom. Not getting hurt. Not eating shit. Just the people at the bottom that might laugh.
