Synopsis
A second chance love story.
Lily Hill was a good girl. Sweet, innocent,
hardworking, with her whole life in front of her. And completely in love with
Jake Stewart.
Jake was the ultimate bad boy, who
screwed around and never played by the rules. He had his own secrets and
demons, and for him, Lily was the light to his dark. He knew how Lily felt
about him. It was the best un-kept secret between friends. But the one good
thing he did was keep his hands off Lily. She’d never survive his deepest
desires.
Or so he thought.
A lot can happen in five years.
Lives change. People change. But what
about love?
Excerpt
At
that moment, my feet refused to take me home. They were glued in place. Jake’s
sad eyes locked with mine and I couldn’t look away. All I saw was a little boy
who wanted to be like his older brother. His idle stare gave me the impression he
wasn’t surprised by the greeting. Like he was resigned to it. His eyes didn’t
let me go until the car sped off, and I could only make out the red tail
lights. I never saw his dad again, but I saw plenty of his brother. Jake stayed
close to him around school until he left to go to university.
We’ve
been sort-of friends ever since. I never ask him about his family, and he never
volunteers any information. It’s as if the evening never happened, yet it’s
etched into my mind so deeply I always think about it when I see the harsher
side to Jake. Those few moments had tied me to Jake, and although the tenuous
threads may have frayed, they always make me go easy on him when I really
should give up and never speak to him again.
“Have
you got your essay finished?” I change the subject, wanting to get back to
surer ground.
“Essay?”
he asks, again looking for me to explain.
“You
know, the one assigned last week comparing the multi-store model of memory and
the working memory model?”
“Looks
like I’ve got a piss-poor memory, huh.” He wiggles his eyebrows humorously, and
I’m right back to loving him again.
I
turn away and bury my head in my hands and try to balance out my own mood
towards Jake. The lesson is over with no other wisecracks from Jake, and I head
over to the other side of the school for my last lesson of the day.
“Hey,
Lil, wait up,” Jake calls after me, and I freeze. He waits for the steady
stream of students to thin around us before going any further. It’s my turn to
look expectantly at him.
“So,
you have a better offer for the weekend than what’s-her-name’s party?”
“No,
I just don’t think it’s my thing.” I pull my books into my chest and inch my
feet towards my next class. As much as I want to keep talking to Jake, I don’t
want to be late. I keep my eyes away from his, not wanting to get trapped in
them. It’s a constant hazard I’m susceptible to. I’m sure he can see everything
I feel if he will only look a little harder at me. As no other guy in school
has ever shown me any attention, I’m under no illusion the first one will be
Jake Stewart. My feet start toward the science block. Jake walks beside me a
little way. Sometimes, on the occasions when Jake was close to acting like a
normal friend, I felt as if he was waiting to tell me something. It never
transpired though and like all the other times, he peels away and turns back in
the opposite direction. No ‘bye’ or ‘see you later’, but then, that isn’t
Jake’s style.
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Links
Universal link: https://books2read.com/u/bQZWBw
