LITMIR.BIZ

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okay.”

      “Don’t you say yes to anyone else before you seriously consider me. I asked first.”

      “I’ll take that into consideration.”

      “You’re seriously going to make me wait for an answer.”

      “Okay, I’ll go, but you can’t wear baby blue. I hate that color of tuxedo.” I turned and pressed my back to the banister.

      Derrick was one of the nicest looking guys in school, and though we were more friends than anything, everyone always called us the cutest couple. It wasn’t like Cole was going to ask me. Or that I would have said yes if he had.

      As soon as I ventured back in to join my family at dinner, I could have sworn someone had dumped a truck load of ice into the dining room.

      “Don’t tell me you are still having anything to do with that guy?” Cole’s hands were flat on the table and his eyes were emerald green.

      “How do you know who I was on the phone with?” Instant anger boiled in my blood. Here we go.

      “I heard his voice when you answered it.” He shifted uncomfortably in his seat but didn’t back down from his disapproval. “You aren’t even that interested in him, yet you still go out with him.”

      It was so odd that he almost knew what I was thinking sometimes. How, though, I had no idea. He must have been around me so much he could read my body language.

      “He just keeps me occupied. And he doesn’t nag.”

      Cole started to speak but clamped his mouth shut, his nostrils flared. He scooped up his plate and stormed to the kitchen.

      Until a few months ago, Cole always acted as if I was a step away from some horrible danger and that he needed to oversee my every move. Tonight was the first time in a while I had seen him act like the old Cole.

      “You should be nicer to him. He only worries about you because he cares,” my father said.

      “I know Daddy, but we’re the same age. He’s not wiser than me. I’d like to make decisions for myself without feeling like I have to run my options by him first.” I flopped down in my seat.

      My father looked at my mother and sighed.

      “Don’t interfere, honey.” She picked up her fork and moved a few noodles.

      Daddy looked back to me. “All I’m saying is you should trust his intuition a little more.”

      I nodded and let the conversation end. There was no need to argue with them.

      Cole had always been over glorified, while I was the one who could never do or say anything right.

      I couldn’t wait to get away from the house and all the restraints put on me.

      * * * *

      On the night of the prom, I’d just begun final touch ups when Cole and his mother’s conversation outside my door stopped me. It was more of an argument than a discussion. I put down a tube of lipstick and stared at myself. Long brown, slightly wavy hair, brown mischievous eyes, a lot of trouble for Cole Kinsley.

      Cole’s voice reverberated through the door. “There’s nothing here for me.”

      “You need to be patient.” Shelby’s voice waivered.

      “I have to move on with my life. I can’t live with hearing what guys really want from Allie. I can’t do this,” Cole said. “I am done.”

      “She doesn’t know what she means to you. Yet. You have to give Kaitlyn some time. She’ll tell her as soon as she wakes up in the morning and hopefully then things will right themselves.”

      When their footsteps padded closer to my room, I hid behind the door.

      Cole and Shelby passed without a word.

      The doorbell rang. I took a deep breath and started out of my room.

      A weird flash of me doing the same thing, but in a different time crossed over me.

      I shook off the notion and went down the stairs in the long purple dress I had found in some boxes on the fourth floor a few months back.

      Mama hired a tailor to repair it because it was so old, but it fit right in with our prom theme Gone with the Wind. It was one of the few books I could really get into and that one held a lot of symbolism for me because no matter how hard I tried not to be, the irritated me always came across as bratty, just like Scarlett. But I wasn’t self-centered. It was just that there was always an internal war going on inside me.

      I had never looked in the mirror and thought that I was pretty, but as the dressed sashayed with each step and I clung to the banister, the floor-length mirror at the bottom of the stairs returned a stunning reflection. I almost didn’t look like me. The dress transformed me somehow.

      When I got halfway down the stairs, Cole looked up from his lazy perch on the sofa.

      He dropped the remote, and his chest froze.

      I had never seen him so still.

      His mouth dropped open and his face drained of its color.

      I had to stop, frozen in Cole’s stare, because I had never seen that look on his face. I was very familiar with his expressions of aggravation and irritation, but never a look of adoration. Uncharted territory.

      My date stood near the door where Cole couldn’t see him, obviously forgotten.

      With our gazes still locked, Cole stood.

      He stepped around the coffee table, the weird smolder in his eyes never leaving as he neared me.

      I stepped down each step, but my legs were heavy and my chest ached.

      Cole stopped just outside the living room threshold.

      Giving us the oddest look, Derrick stayed planted at the door.

      Cole started closer as a slow grin pulled at the corners of his red lips.

      My chest swelled with pride that I’d taken his breath away and made him smile all in the same minute.

      The smile didn’t last long. He looked blankly at Derrick and then back to me.

      I had just made it to the bottom step.

      Cole’s chest rose and fell in heavy, steady breaths.

      “You look amazing,” Derrick said.

      I couldn’t take my eyes from Cole.

      His eyes flickered the oddest color of green as he turned his stone-cold glare toward Derrick.

      They’d flashed like that before when we were outside during a heated argument. I’d thought the sun had hit them just the right way to make them spark, but this time there was no source of light that could have caused the anomaly.

      The same dark glower happened again, but with even more intensity when Derrick reached out to guide my next step down.

      Cole took an unsteady step away from us and rounded to face the back of the house. He stalked toward the patio doors. He went there to think at night. He would stare off into the darkness for hours. Sometimes he even ventured out past the confines of the property into the woods for even longer.

      Mama and Daddy came out of the living room, Mama teary-eyed and Daddy with a proud swell in his chest.

      He shook Derrick’s hand. “Jordan Night, it’s nice to meet you.”

      “Derrick Cobb. Thank you for allowing me to take you daughter out for the evening. I promise she’ll be well taken care of.” Derrick turned to my mother and kissed her hand.

      “Kaitlyn Night,” Mama said. “It’s so nice to meet you.”

      “Likewise,” Derrick said.

      I looked toward the back of the house.

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