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CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Ethan heldonto Becca as if she were life itself. The feelings he had for her had been growing since that first moment when she arrived, and they had finally exploded into something he had zero control over.
Strangely enough, he didn’t mind. Ethan didn’t have to have control everything—not when Becca was with him. He felt safe, secure, and understood.
Even though their bodies were pressed together, Becca pushed into him, causing him to stumble backward and break their kiss.
She laughed, and it was only then that he realized Buttercup had been the one to nudge at them both. Ethan reached for Becca’s hand, pulling her away from the mischievous animal, but before he could ask her what that kiss meant, she spoke.
“I guess we should get started, huh?” Becca tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “We don’t have a lot of time to get it recorded. Is it long?”
Ethan hesitated. The burning sensation within him demanded to know what she was feeling. Did she want this kiss to meansomething more? Or was she just giving in to the tension that had slowly been building between them?
Her hand slipped from his and she moved toward the pack he’d placed near a log in the clearing. The meadow surrounding them was quiet. Bugs and birds chirped. The wind tickled the leaves and tall grasses. Even the sun shone with just enough warmth that the whole place felt like it had been created by a magical being.
What was he thinking?
He wasn’t a romantic. He’d been to this place a couple of times, and every time he’d thought it was a nice place to just sit and let his thoughts drift elsewhere.
All it had taken was one kiss from one girl and he was letting his thoughts run wild.
“Ethan,” Becca called, and his head snapped up. “Are you coming?” She sat on one of the logs that had been arranged in a semicircle. “I’m gonna need that speech if you’re going to want me to record it.” The smile on her face made her eyes shine that much brighter.
His feet moved without permission from his head, and he found himself settling beside her. Pulling the speech from his pocket, he held it out to her. When her fingers brushed against his, he was once again pulled into the memory of that kiss despite it happening only moments ago.
Over the next ten minutes, Becca went over the speech, then started recording it. How easy it was to get lost in the sound of her voice. When she laughed at a joke Andrew had included in the speech, Ethan found himself leaning closer to her.
Maybe she was a witch. That was the only thing that made sense at this point. He was so entranced by her, she couldn’t be real.
A siren. That was what she was.
Her voice fell silent, and he jumped when he realized she’d caught him staring. Her eyes were guarded and there was only a shadow of a smile touching her lips. “You okay?”
Ethan nodded, jumping to his feet. “Of course.”
She held out the speech. “Well, I’m done. And here’s your phone. If you listen to it, you should be able to start memorizing it, or you could listen to it as you read the words on the page.”
He accepted both from her and nodded again. Lifting the speech, he forced himself to look into her eyes. “Thanks for this.”
“It’s nothing,” she murmured.
“No, it really isn’t. This means more to me than you will ever know.”
Becca was quiet for a few moments. Her eyes dipped to the paper he held in his hand. “I just realized something.”
“What was that?”
“You still read. You don’t just throw things out.”
He swallowed the lump that had grown in his throat. “Icanread.” The instinct to get defensive reared its ugly head. “I’m not completely illiterate.”
She shut her eyes and a flush spread across her face. “I know you can read. That wasn’t what I was getting at. I was just saying…” Her blush deepened. “What I was trying to say is that I think it’s great that you still try to read. You’re not giving up on it.”
The tenseness in his shoulders relaxed slightly. “Oh.”
Becca opened her eyes again and peered at him deeply. “I know it must have been incredibly hard to figure out how to do things with your dyslexia. A lesser man would have given up or blamed others. But I don’t see that in you. I see a man who wanted something and did what he had to in order to survive.” She tilted her head and her eyes narrowed. “Have you ever considered getting help with it? There are a lot more programs out there these days than there were even ten years ago.”
He shook his head, looking away as the embarrassment returned. Even though he knew she wasn’t trying to offend him, he couldn’t help but feel like she just wanted to fix him. She wanted him to be something he simply wasn’t.
