Page 154 of Faking It With the Small-Town Bad Boy

I’m blinking back tears slower than I can stop them from dripping all

over his shirt. He doesn’t seem to care, kissing my forehead while I

reel from his beautiful words. I hate that I’m falling for Percy, mostly

because I can hold a grudge to the grave, and we never did get off on

the best start in life. He was reckless and always in trouble.

I see now he was fighting so much behind closed doors that it’s not

nearly fair that I held any of that against him. He was trying to

escape his family cycle of addiction, while also being abused in a way

no man or woman should ever deserve to be treated—not even a little

bit. He battled all of that and then battled the walls around my heart.

And here we are, in the shop my father built from the ground up, a

history in these walls I wish stays in the wind of this property

forever, and I’m focused on the love of a man I never saw coming.

The town used to say the way I fell in love with Ryan was seamless. It

was easy.

It was easy because it wasn’t right.

Falling in love with Percy has been hell at times, and it’s been the

most unconventional thing in my life thus far. That’s perfect in my

book because I’m unconventional. So is Percy. We aren’t puzzle

pieces that fit together in the grain of life, and I love this dynamic

even more because of that anomaly.

We’re perfectly imperfect, and I think that suits me better than any

high school sweetheart story I could ever whip up with my last love

affair.

“Percy, I—”

I nearly say the words to him, at last, to explain how I feel, how I just

know he feels about me, but I’m cut short. The ground rattles, and I

panic at the feeling, seeing a bright flicker of orange and yellow light

streak through the night sky. Holding my hands to my chest, I rush

to the edge of the shop, my body outlined in the glint of light that

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