The Truth About You & Me Read Online Free Page A

her to, and her handwriting was perfect. I trusted her with our log book and I explained the experiment as we went along, and when you caught me talking about the difference between the control group and the experimental group, comparing them to drug trials and sugar pills, you paused, smiling in that special way of yours.
    I wish I could see that smile now.
    I wonder if you even smile anymore.

    Saturday morning, you changed your routine, and for that reason, our paths crossed.
    Do you think it was fate, Bennett? Do you believe in fate?
    I do. The same way I believe in soul mates and love at first sight. I don’t think you can believe in just one of those things. Seems to me you have to believe in all three.
    I was leaning on the trunk of a gnarly, drooping cedar tree, trying to catch my breath. I was only halfway up Mt. Peak. You always called it Pinnacle Peak, remember? Because that’s what it’s called on the maps. But nobody from Enumclaw calls it that.
    To the locals, it’s just Mt. Peak. I guess that’s a weird name, like a river named water.
    In any case, I was looking down at my battered hiking boots, trying to calm my burning lungs, when I heard a dog barking. I glanced up as a gorgeous golden retriever bounded up the trail, his reddish-yellow fur waving in the wind, his long tongue lolling out the side of his mouth.
    I’m not afraid of dogs or anything—you know how much I love that dog of yours—but when he jogged right over and put his paws up on my chest, nearly knocking me down, I was less than thrilled.
    â€œNo! Down!” you said, and when I glanced up, my heart stopped. Doesn’t seem like a heart can beat when it’s way down in your knees, anyway.
    Your face was flushed and your long-sleeved T-shirt clung to your muscled frame, the faintest outline of sweat shadowing your shoulders. When you looked up and met my eyes, you’d been about to say sorry. But instead you smiled and said, “ Oh, hey, Madelyn.”
    Like we knew each other, like we were friends. You stepped up close to me so you could snap a bright red leash onto your dog’s collar as he danced around at my feet. I no longer cared that he’d left two muddy paw prints on my T-shirt, that he was stomping on my feet.
    â€œHi, Mr. Cartwright,” I said, wondering if my ponytail was jacked up, if my face looked as good as yours when flushed with exertion or if I just looked sweaty and ugly.
    â€œI think we can dispense with the formalities outside of class,” you said, reaching out like we were just meeting for the first time. “It’s Bennett.”
    You have a nice handshake, you know. A solid, firm grip.
    In that moment, an intense desire washed over me. I wanted our hands to be clasped in a different way. I wanted to casually hold yours, our fingers interlaced, and I wanted you to want that too.
    That’s what I was thinking, anyway. I don’t know what you thought as our skin touched, palm to palm. All the time we spent together, all those talks, and I never did ask you how you felt about the first time we’d really touched. Voluntarily, that is. The crash into each other in the lab hardly counted.
    Your dog chose that moment to take off, yanking you away from me, and you sort of pulled me with you for a moment before releasing my hand.
    That’s how we came to be hiking together on that quiet, foggy morning. They might think it was something you planned, that you asked to see me outside of class, but it was pure serendipity.
    Normally, Mt. Peak is busy, but maybe people didn’t want to climb the mountain knowing that the town was shrouded in fog and the view would be obscured. We only passed two hikers that morning, and neither of them paid much attention to us.
    I liked that, too. That neither of those hikers thought it was odd that we’d be together.
    â€œSo, come here often?” you asked in a cheesy voice, as you cracked a smile.
    You have a