The Kiss That Launched 1,000 Gifs Read Online Free Page A

heading into high school. Two more months, and Megan would be a sophomore. And whether he said it out loud or not, that fact terrified Ash.
    Despite the fact that Fawn had given birth to Megan, she had never really seen herself as a mother—more as the cool older sister. Ash’s parents had been the main caretakers of Megan for the first fourteen years with Ash as a backup. Fawn had used getting her PhD and other studies as an excuse to be away from home more often than not. When Fawn did come home, she tended to spend time with Megan for as long as it was fun. When things got taxing, it was always time run off and “study” more.
    Ash’s parents had debated moving away for years. It was the debate between enabling their daughter’s irresponsibility and abandoning their granddaughter.
    Which was worse?
    But with Ash promising to fill the gap, they’d finally made the hard choice and moved to their dream retirement community. But if Ash’s mom had walked in tonight to an empty house with Megan alone inside, he knew they would have moved back in a heartbeat.
    Stomach twisting with guilt that he wasn’t doing enough, Ash crossed the living room and found his niece at the table surrounded by a laptop, books, and notepad. It was summer, but Megan wasn’t one to let that slow her down. The girl had a vision of receiving her Master’s degree by 20 and a PhD at 24—four years earlier than her mother had.
    So far she was on track, even when that meant studying on a summer evening.
    “How’s my little Ravenclaw?” Ash said, fully expecting the rolled eyes he got in response.
    “Seriously?” Megan said, shutting the book in front of her. “I’ve been over that for, like—”
    “Like, nine months now?” he teased, taking the seat next to her. “I know. Harry Potter is, like, so over once you become a freshman, right?”
    Megan shrugged. “A girl’s gotta trade up sometime.”
    Ash frowned. “Hmm. That sounds like something my uncle ears don’t want to hear about.”
    “Probably not,” his niece said with a smirk. “You said you needed my help with something?”
    “Yeah.” Ash pulled his charged work phone out of his pocket. “I’m supposed to get on Instagram for work. How does that happen?”
    Megan’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “My unplugged uncle is about to dial in? I don’t know whether to be proud or disillusioned.”
    “Probably the latter, since I’m doing this by command of ‘The Man’… although The Man is technically a woman in this case.”
    Megan’s lips pursed knowingly. “Grace?”
    “It was actually Jan, the head of the marketing department,” Ash said, turning the phone on. He knew how to do that much.
    His niece’s young eyes studied him with more wisdom than he expected from a fifteen-year-old. “But Grace was there to incentivize you, right?”
    Ash fought the urge to fidget. “Why would you say that?”
    “Because I follow Grace on Instagram and I saw what she posted today.”
    “Really?” Ash said, equal parts relieved and nervous. “What did she post?”
    Megan grinned. “Let’s get you set up, and you can see for yourself in five minutes.”
    Ash handed his niece the phone. “It only takes five minutes?”
    “If you’re not a tech-tard, sure,” she said. “All we have to do is download the app, set you up and you’ll be good to go.”
    “Huh,” he said, settling in to watch her do all the work. “That sounds easy enough.”
    “They try to make it foolproof,” Megan said and thirty seconds later a progress bar showed that the phone was downloading Instagram.
    “Why don’t you just tell me what she posted?” Ash said, watching the bar crawl.
    “Because I want to see the look on your face when you see it and hear your side of the story,” Megan said. “Although, it’s been out there for several hours with no comment from you, so I don’t know how much any defense you have will matter at this point. She totally caught you. You’ll lose points