Reckless Heat: A Hostile Operations Team Prequel Read Online Free Page A

I can’t tell anyone else this. But Jules understands.
    “I know, Evie.”
    I close my eyes and roll my head around on my neck, easing the tension. “Three more weeks. He leaves right after graduation.”
    I still have another year to go before I graduate. I mean, I’ve always known I’ll spend my senior year at Rochambeau High without Matt Girard—but I thought he’d be at LSU, close enough to come home on weekends. Close enough to visit if Mama lets me borrow the car sometimes.
    He would realize someday what I already know—that we’re meant to be together. I’ve always been certain of it and I’m willing to be patient.
    But how is he going to do that if we never see each other anymore? What if he meets someone else? What if he forgets me?
    I have to do something before I lose him forever. But I don’t know what…

Chapter Six
    EVIE
----
    “ T here’s a party tonight ,” Julie says. “Out at Rochambeau Lake.”
    I look up to find her standing over me, grinning gleefully. Her hair is pink today. She changes it about as often as other people change socks, so I don’t even remark on it.
    It’s Friday and it’s our lunch break. I didn’t feel like eating in the cafeteria, so I grabbed my sack lunch and brought it outside where I could sit beneath one of the trees and think.
    I want to be alone, but that’s not really possible in high school, is it?
    “So?” I say. I’m not in a party mood. Matt’s leaving in two weeks and I don’t know how to tell him what I feel. What I know about us deep inside.
    “Soooo,” Julie says, plopping down beside me and opening a pack of M&M’s. “Everyone will be there. Including Matt Girard, dumbass.”
    “How does that help me? The place will be packed.” Which means that talking to Matt will be impossible. He’s popular, and he’s always the center of attention, especially with girls. Getting him alone at a thing like that? Not happening.
    Not to mention, what the hell would I say? I love you, please love me too?
    I shudder at the thought. Julie holds out the candy and I take a couple.
    “So what if it is? Wear something sexy and talk to him. Get his attention. You don’t have long left, babes.”
    We talked about this the other day. About what I need to do to let Matt know I want more from him. Be sexy was about all we came up with.
    That and ask him to sleep with me. Be my first. I threw it out there as a last-ditch kind of solution, but the more I think about it, the more I like it.
    Ask Matt to be my first. Ask him to initiate me, to take my virginity.
    Oh, I like that thought a lot—but yeah, it scares the hell out of me too. How do I ask the guy who’s been my best friend, who I played with in the mud when we were kids, to do something so outside the norm of our relationship?
    Then again, if I don’t ask him, how will he ever figure out that we’re meant to be together?
    Yeah, it’s a real conundrum. Let things go on as they have been and wait anxiously to hear from him when he’s away, or cross the line of our friendship and ask him outright to strip me naked and do all the things I’ve imagined doing with him?
    It’s easy to figure out which of those choices makes my stomach twist into knots. I’m not saving myself out of some misguided idea that I have to remain pure until marriage. No, I’m saving myself for Matt. Always have been.
    It isn’t that I haven’t tried to be with another guy. But when he slips a hand under my shirt and starts fondling my breasts, all I want is to get away. It doesn’t feel right. It feels, well, disgusting.
    “Come on, Eves. You can ride with Jack and me.”
    I look at her like she’s lost her mind. “Ride with you and Jack? What about after, when he wants to take you parking?”
    Parking being the euphemism for finding a field somewhere and fucking in the backseat. For once, I wish I was comfortable with that idea, that I’d done it before so it wasn’t such a scary thought to approach Matt.
    Julie