Stay (Dunham series #2) Read Online Free Page B

every time she looked at
him.
    She had watched him for the last year, since she’d
gone to see Mr. Hilliard, silent, invisible, wondering when or even
if he would see her and acknowledge her. Eric Cipriani would
graduate in a month. After that, she would probably see him around
town and in the feed store he managed, but she wouldn’t see him all
the time, like she did now. Every day, she woke up wondering, hoping that today would be the day he approached her to
say:
    “Thank you, Vanessa. You’re probably the bravest
person I know.” And then maybe he would kiss her. Maybe on the
lips, even.
    The thought made her catch her breath and get a
funny little sensation in the pit of her belly, which always
happened when she thought that maybe, just maybe he would like her
a little bit more than just as a brave person. Maybe he would come
to like her, you know, that way.
    Because once he graduated, unless he had that reason to seek her out, she would have no such easy access to him
as she did now, no reason to go to the feed store, no reason to
cross his path at all. Vanessa was running out of time.
    She stood behind a tree, peeking around it, to watch
him. He and his friends sat on the picnic tables just off campus,
drinking beer out of longneck bottles and smoking cigarettes while
they watched the senior girls, and pointed at a few of them here
and there, laughing. Although she didn’t know what was funny about
the senior girls, she loved his laugh. His smile made her want to
smile, too, so she did.
    At that moment, his gaze met hers, and he stopped
laughing. Stopped smiling. Hurt began to blossom somewhere deep
inside her chest and she bit her lip, hoping his expression didn’t
mean what she thought it meant.
    He turned away from her then and his beautiful long
black hair floated on the breeze. He didn’t respond to the talk
going on around him anymore and he took a long drink from his
bottle. He threw his cigarette down on the ground and stubbed it
out with his silver-tipped cowboy boots the high school girls said
had retractable knives in the toes.
    He walked away from his friends—away from
Vanessa—without a word. Her attention caught on the way his tight
ripped jeans moved over his butt with every step, and there was
that funny little feeling in the pit of her belly again.
    No “thank you” for Vanessa today. No kiss. She
whirled and, her back to the tree, she slid down its trunk to curl
in on herself, tamping down the sharp pain in her chest. She
managed not to cry about it for two whole months, until cheer camp
that summer.
    “Vanessa,” drawled Annie Franklin, captain of the
squad. “Did you invite Knox to our camp closing exhibition?”
    “Yes,” she lied. She hadn’t dared, though she knew
very good and well that her access to “that hot prosecutor Knox
Hilliard” was the only reason the cheerleaders, prodded by their
mothers, had reluctantly recruited her for the varsity squad.
Considering Vanessa wasn’t eligible to cheer varsity for two more
years, their mothers had lobbied the Alumni Association for an
exemption.
    “Well? Is he coming?”
    “He has a family thing.”
    “Did you give him that note?”
    “Yes,” she answered truthfully. That was why she
hadn’t dared ask him anything else.
    “What did he say?”
    Is she out of her fucking mind?! “He was in a
hurry. He just put it in his pocket.”
    Annie looked through Vanessa, her mouth pursed.
“Maybe he’s gay.”
    Uh, no. “I don’t know.”
    “Hey, Annie!” called the vice captain. “What
happened to your Italian stallion?”
    Annie’s face darkened and Vanessa’s heart beat a lot
faster; she hadn’t seen him in almost two months.
Anywhere.
    “He left,” Annie snapped back.
    “Left? Left where?”
    “Left town.”
    “Where’d he go?”
    “Don’t know.”
    “Ask his mom.”
    “She’s gone, too. It’s like they disappeared off the
face of the planet.”
     
     
    * * * * *
     
     
    And the Rich Have Their Ice in the