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He takes his time replying back.
Probably because he’s busy staring at me. Studying my upturned face. And I let him, because that gives me the time to let the news sink in.
The great big news.
That he did see me at the game.
He did.
All this time I thought that he didn’t know that I existed. That he had no clue, but he did.
He did have a clue.
Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God.
“So is that why you’ve been stalking me for the past week?” he asks at last. “Because you think the way I kick a muddy ball around is beautiful?”
“No,” I reply.
“So why don’t you enlighten me then?”
Right.
Why have I been following him?
Well first, he is beautiful. He’s the most beautiful guy I’ve ever seen. And then there’s the fact that he makes me feel the things that no guy has ever made me feel — electric, euphoric, excited. Just the way I do when I’m reading my romance novels.
But that’s not all.
That’s not why I’m obsessed with him or in love with him.
I think I’m in love with him because I have a suspicion he’s like me. Or at least our stories are somewhat similar.
So in all my stalking and observing and asking around about him, his legendary temper isn’t the only thing that I’ve come to find out. Turns out he comes from a big family of siblings. He’s got three older brothers and a baby sister. And like Reed and me, they have no one else but each other.
While our parents are still technically around, his father abandoned the family when he was a kid, and then a few years later, their mother died of cancer.
And since then they’ve been taking care of each other by themselves.
In fact they’ve single-handedly — by they, I mean all the brothers, including Ledger — raised their baby sister and taken care of her. And people say that the Thorne brothers would do anything for their sister. They say that the way these siblings stick together is the stuff of legends and very rarely heard of.
And I just… I just want to hug him, you see.
I just want to tell him how amazing he is, how freaking wonderful for not only taking care of his sister like only a few people can ever do, but also for beating all the odds and becoming one of the best soccer players with such a bright future.
In fact, he reminds me of the only person in my life who’s ever made me feel safe.
My brother.
And yes, I know my brother would flip his shit if I ever told him that he’s like his greatest enemy.
But anyway, those are the reasons why I’ve been thinking about him, obsessing over him, following him around.
Not that I’m going to tell him that.
I’m not an idiot.
I know how strange it will sound to him.
As strange as I sound to people that I know and grew up with.
So the people I grew up with or go to school with come from a very specific and strange society. The society of the rich. Where things like love and family and good parenting and so on aren’t very high on the list of priorities. In my world, everyone’s more concerned about dresses and jewelry and parties and cars and exotic vacations. Husbands cheat on their wives and wives on their husbands. Children get handed from one nanny to another until they grow up to be self-centered and materialistic. And then, they marry the same kind of people and behave the exact same way as their parents.
I don’t want any of that.
I want something different.
I realize that I not only don’t have lofty goals like the girls in my world, but also like the girls in the rest of the world. I don’t want to be an engineer or a doctor, a lawyer or a teacher or any of those things. All I want — all I’ve ever wanted for as long as I can remember — is the kind of love I read about in romance novels. I want a man who loves me, who makes me feel safe, and I want to make a family with him.
As simple as these wishes are, they’re super controversial in my world.
And anything or anyone who thinks differently is branded as crazy.
So that’s what I am to them.
A crazy girl living in her own world.
And while I don’t give a fuck — in fact I flaunt it, my abnormal way of thinking, just to annoy them — about what they think of me, I do care about what he may think if I tell him that I’ve fallen in love with him at first sight.
So I try to stall. “Well first, I don’t think you could call it stalking. What I’ve been doing for the past week.”
