Kayla is a smart, focused, top-mark student in her last two senior years of high school in a private facility for rich kids in Florida. All she wants is to get accepted to Harvard and graduate with top marks to follow the career she has set for herself. Her entire life is about becoming an independent and successful vet. She has micro-managed it and planned it to the tiniest detail. Leaving no room for a social life or living her teen years like her peers. This year has had its ups and downs, with her stepbrother of almost ten years coming to live under the same roof after being raised apart after their parents married. The chaos and drama his appearance has brought since he despises not only his father but Kayla's mother too, has made home tense. He's a rude, defiant, and arrogant pain in her ass who is hellbent on causing trouble and listens to no one. Dane is the polar opposite in every way - Vain, oversexed, a playboy who takes nothing seriously except booze, girls, and his motorbike while he rebels in every way against his father for ripping apart his family. Looking like a teen idol, acting like someone who doesn't need to take accountability for anything in his life, Kayla honestly cannot stand him. She sees a loser who will live on daddy's money and drink away his youth while sleeping with every girl in the county. At 17, they have known one another most of their lives and never had any kind of friendly relationship. They have always been classmates but never friends and definitely not siblings. - but all that is about to change.
View MoreMy head scrambles into sense faster than when he did this to me last night, and even though Dane kissing me is quickly becoming a weakness, my sense of indignation intervenes and push him away. Not quite ready to jump into smooching without him having said very much at all. It’s so sudden, and too much is going on in my head after being avoided all day to be satisfied with a kiss.“You can’t just make a statement like that and then kiss me…. This isn’t us talking about it. This is you just informing me of your intention and then acting on it. If that’s even what this is…. I’m not a mind reader, Dane. I need actual words!” I don’t even know why I have an issue with this. He’s doing what my heart has wanted for a long while. He wouldn’t kiss me like this if he didn’t intend something to happen with us, so I don’t know where the doubt stemmed from. He’s pushed me away enough times to prove it.“I figured actions speak louder than words. A kiss is pretty self-explanatory.” Dane brushes cl
“I wish I didn’t.” I drop back to my arms propped on the desk, resting my chin in my palms, and watch her scribble notes. No will to do it myself. She is as diligent as always. She has them word for word, highlighted, and added notations. She has been keeping up with the slide changes while I have been pondering everything wrong with my day. “Life would be so much simpler if I still hated him.”“You never hated him,” Elisa replies far too quickly and seems annoyingly know it all. She didn’t even have the grace to lift her face from taking notes to say it.“I did so.” I point out in slight irritation.“Nope… never. You got annoyed by him, angry at him, even upset, but I don’t think you have ever actually hated him. You would cave fast the second you thought anything bad was happening with him…. Dane has always been your Achilles heel.”I open my mouth to deny it and then don’t. I stop and ponder this for a long moment and find no argument in her statement.It makes me feel all the more
“Earth to Kayla!” Elisa taps me on the temple with her pen and makes me jump out of my daydream with a start.“What?” I was miles away, lost in brain fog and a million stupid thoughts about last night.“You were so close to drooling with a wide mouth and vacant expression that it was frightening. I thought the body snatchers had gotten you.” Elisa smiles, jesting, and turns back to face forward, pulling her notebook closer and carrying on. Her red hair sweeping down to half conceal her face again, and I often wonder how that does not annoy her. Writing through her hair on her splayed notebook. “We’re copying from the projector, by the way… in case you have no idea what we are doing!” She points out, raising her pen to gesture in front of us, and I blink ahead, seeing an entirely new slide of notes our lab tech has put up for us. We’re in Biology, normally one of my favorite classes, and I have spent most of it zoned out. If I am being honest, this is how my entire day has gone, and th
“KAYLA…WHERE ARE YOU?” My mom’s raised voice snaps me out of euphoria, and Dane and I jump apart. Ending the kiss abruptly and turning to look at his closed bedroom door beside us. Bodies are tingling and now creating distance as though we had been sparked by something to separate us. Dane mouths a cuss word under his breath.We can hear my mom padding down the hall and a door creak as she checks out the guest room, calling my name again. She must have been in mine to say goodnight and realized I wasn't there. If she catches us here like this, she will go crazy. I don’t know how to explain why I was in his bedroom in the dark with him after I said I was going to bed. She will immediately know by looking at me that we are doing something we shouldn’t be doing.My guilt and panic start ripping through me at a hundred miles an hour, and I lose my problem-solving ability.“What do we do?” I whisper to Dane, fear gripping me and my body icing up. Dane frowns, takes a heavy breath, then rea
He’s hit me with this so unexpectedly that I cannot get my body to react in any way. I don’t know if it’s the shock or the residual bruising from him wounding me, but I am like a statue. The intimacy of having his face pressed to mine, his eyes closed. The taste of his mouth and the heady smell of his natural scent and aftershave, as enjoyable as they are, don’t motivate me to move an inch. Before tonight I would have given anything for him to kiss me, but I can’t.Dane pulls back after a moment, aware I don’t respond, and it’s written all over his face for the first time. Dropping his hand to hang by his side, we stand a foot apart without contact. A real show of his inner feelings that he normally shields so well. A hint of fear that we’re truly not okay anymore. He doesn’t understand my lack of returning his affection. Given I am the one who kept pushing for it. Whatever his plan was about pushing me away, it seems to have evaporated completely.“Why did you do that?” My voice croa
“What’s it to you? … I was out. Busy.” He shrugs, leaning back on the rail behind him casually, and sits a little, looking exactly like Dane of the last ten years. His ‘I do not care persona’ is back intact. The air thickens around us with tension, and it only further dents my courage.“Where did you go? Tyler said you left an hour ago?” I stammer it out, hating myself for mentioning it because I don’t think I genuinely want an answer to that.“Where do you think I was?” He sneers, pushing me away, freezing me out like so many times before, and I lose all bravado completely. I tell myself to turn around and walk away, but my feet are glued to the spot, and I can’t tear myself away. I can sense that staying here will be awful, that he’s in a fighting frame of mind.“I don’t know if you don’t tell me.” My voice gets quieter with every word, and my legs tremble because my sixth sense tells me he aims to hurt me. I can feel it in him. Reverting to the Dane who uses my emotions against me
“I’m going to bed, mom. Goodnight.” I pick up my glass of milk and the copy of Romeo and Juliet I am reading and head for our lounge door. It’s late evening, and we just sat through hours of my mom’s favorite series in a binge session. She had a rare afternoon off when I came home from school, and wanted to do something together.“Is there still no response from him?” My mom is fluffing the couch cushions before heading to bed. It was just the two of us tonight, as Brian had a work dinner, and Dane never came home.“No. His cell is ringing out, and he isn’t replying to my texts.”Dane is doing what Dane does. After our talk, he dodged me all afternoon at school and blanked me at leaving time. Acting like a cold, ignorant jerk when we crossed paths in class. He went off with Tyler and hasn’t been seen since. Reverting to behaviors of before, and I don’t know why I'm letting it upset me. I should never let him get to me when he starts acting like a prize asshole.My mum checks her watc
“How many high school girls grow up still in love with their boyfriend from age seventeen? The statistics speak for themself. So if we’re not doing this because of some noble idea that you can’t give me a future, then stop. We might not even last a month. We’ve never done this before. There’s no guarantee we would ever last, so thinking of the future is stupid.”I know how lame it sounds, but I can’t think of how else to convince him to give me a chance.Do I really believe we have no future? I don’t even know, but I don’t care. I understand why Romeo and Juliet threw caution to the wind to steal the moments they had before it all came crashing down. This longing for him won’t subside until I have him in the way my heart is screaming for. I want the now and screw what will happen later.“What are you doing?” Dane leans in with accusation, eyes narrowed and irritation evident. There is a static buzz about him that a storm is brewing, yet he doesn’t intimidate me. A hint of the more ag
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