Page 58 of Falling

Again, if I hadn’t just come…

He was going to kill me, but I’d die happy.

“Book?” he asked, looking me in the eyes again. “Are we really gonna save the library?”

“Thought you weren’t cut out for the job,” I teased, smiling up at him.

“Well, I’m not,” he said. “I’m still not. But Otter Bay needs a library. Everyone needs a library. They’re important.”

I reached out to brush my fingers against his cheek, affection rising up in my chest.

“We’re gonna save it,” I promised. “You trust me?”

“More than anyone,” Miles said. He meant it. He meant that he trusted me, and I knew what that meant to him. What it’d take for him to trust again after the betrayal he’d been through.

“We’re gonna save it,” I repeated. “That’s a promise. Okay?”

“Okay.” Miles smiled one of those pretty, shy smiles I loved. Then he bent down, and caught my mouth, and kissed me with all the new skills he’d learned in the past twelve hours.

He kept kissing me all the way through his alarm, and didn’t even pause to switch it off.

21

MILES

“Are you cheating on me?”

I looked up to see Ryder peering over the desk, eyebrow raised at the book in my hands.

I licked my lips, glancing between him and the book. “I’m, uh. Trying to get a broader idea of what happens in romance novels. You know. So I can be more helpful.”

“Uh huh,” Ryder said, resting his hip against the desk. “That’s one of Booker’s.”

Heat rushed up the back of my neck, pooling at the tips of my eats. How the hell did he know that?

“How the hell did you know that?” I asked aloud.

Ryder chuckled. “You know your ears are crimson right now?” he asked. “I know because Booker loaned it to me when I told him I wanted to write a romance novel. So I could get a feel for how they’re meant to come together. That one’s his favorite.”

I shifted awkwardly in my chair. “I know.”

“But you’re not reading it because you want to write a romance novel,” Ryder said. “You’re reading it because you want to know what Booker’s ideal romance would look like. Because it is Booker, isn’t it? I felt so dense after you left the other morning for not realizing.”

I stared down at my borrowed book, but I couldn’t help smiling and giving myself away. I wasn’t sure if I was meant to tell anyone, or how Booker would feel about that, but I couldn’t lie to Ryder. We were friends.

“Is that where he was last night?” Ryder whispered—it was more of a stage whisper, which probably wasn’t intentional—leaning over the desk like we were conspiring together. “With you?”

My ears burned even harder but I nodded anyway, looking up to meet Ryder’s eyes.

Ryder’s whole face lit up, splitting into a broad grin. He looked so sincerely happy for me.

“High five,” he said, holding his hand out across the desk.

“I think they call it a low five when you do it like this,” I said, but I still slapped his hand and felt a little jolt of affection.

Ryder was my friend. Booker was my…

Well, he was definitely my friend.