AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She’d seen him on stage, and somehow the stage lights did the same thing. Transformed him. Making him something not quite real but at the same time primal. Something that made her blood heat and her heart want. Rock star genes. Potent things.
One more step and she was out of the shadow of the lighthouse.
“Hey, Zach.”
The music died and he swung around, face startled. It eased when he saw who it was.
“Hey, birthday girl.” He put the guitar down in the case lying open on the grass. “Isn’t the party back that way?” He tipped his head in the direction of the house.
“It’s winding down. I wanted some air.”
“Too much champagne?”
She shook her head. She wanted him to be clear on that point. “No.”
“Young people today, no idea how to party.”.
“Tell me, oh ancient twenty-one-year-old, of the ways of your people.”
He laughed at that. “That’s ancient twenty-one-year-and-four-month-old to you, grasshopper.”
“I bow to your superior knowledge,” she said and sat down on the grass next to him, choosing a spot maybe a smidge closer than she would usually. Her shoulder, bared by the strapless dress she wore—she spent hours choosing exactly the right one in her favorite new-leaf shade—was only a few inches from his. The warmth rising from him was a startling contrast to the night air.
It made her want to lean closer. But, no. Not yet.
This was enough to start. At least her heart thought it was from the way it was suddenly pounding in her ears. God. What was she doing? She stared out at the water, trying to remember how to breathe.
What she was doing was what she’d wanted to do since she’d been about fifteen, looked up one day, and realized, to her horror, that she had a hopeless, ridiculous, full-blown crush on Zach. Her best friend’s brother.
Zach was looking out at the water too. “Score lots of good birthday loot?”
“I haven’t opened any of it yet,” she said. “But Mom and Dad got me a car.”
“That’s cool,” Zach said.
“Yes,” she agreed. She doubted he understood how cool. Her parents had refused to buy her a car when she’d first started driving, arguing that they lived a whole fifteen-minute walk from the high school and that nowhere on the island was far enough away that she couldn’t ride her bike. Which was true but deeply uncool. Faith and Zach, of course, had cars. Plus Grey owned a bunch of them, so really, they had their pick. Which was good for them and good for her because Faith never minded giving her a ride. And face it, usually wherever Leah was going, Faith was going too.
But that wouldn’t be true much longer.
Faith was leaving. So was Zach.
And she’d need a car in L.A.
She took a breath. No letting the conversation get sidetracked. If she started a nice friendly chat with Zach, then she’d lose her nerve.
“Of course, there’s one thing I really want for my birthday,” she said.
“Oh?”
Maybe he’d heard something in her voice because his head turned. Which put his face very close to hers. Those famous gray-green Harper eyes turned an odd luminous moonlit shade at night.
She’d never seen them this close.
She could fall right into them. Never come up for air.
Drown herself in Zach.
Even if it was for just one night.
