Free And It All Comes Down To You by Kyra Lennon

Prologue
    “Back up for one second!” Lydia held up her hands, her eyes wide as the pillow that had rested on her lap slipped off and thumped on the floor with her shock. “Logan asked you on a road trip?”
    A laugh burst out of my mouth at my best friend’s words. A giddy, ‘Yeah, I can’t believe it either’ kind of laugh born from having waited for what felt like a million years for this to happen.
    This was not such a big deal. Not to a normal, well-adjusted woman, but I was a teenager in the body of a twenty-two-year-old.
    I guess that’s what happens when you fall for someone you knew when you were young. You regress. You go back to that magical time when everything is new and you do everything for the first time. It’s like stepping through the looking glass and seeing yourself the way you want to be seen. The way you hope you’re seen. You step through, you become that person who looks at the world through enchanted eyes, and you believe in the happy ending again.
    “Yes,” I confirmed. “Logan asked me on a road trip. And before you say anything else, it’s just a road trip, not a date.”
    Unfortunately.
    I tried to push that thought aside for two reasons. One, I wanted to be able to look Logan in the eye, and if I thought about anything happening between us before we set off in the morning, I wouldn’t manage it. And two, whatever I felt for him had to come second to getting to know him better. Obviously, I knew him, but I needed some confirmation. Confirmation that the image I had of him was real, and not just a stitched together version of what I wanted him to be.
    “Tell me again what this trip is for?” Lydia asked, kindly steering the conversation in a less nerve-tingling direction.
    “It’s a music thing. An outdoor festival he has tickets for. It starts late afternoon and goes on through the evening. We’re driving back tomorrow night.”
    Lydia chuckled as if this was about to be the start of everything I’d ever wanted, and I whipped my own pillow out from behind me and took a swing at her, causing her to laugh harder as she tipped over onto her side. “Oh, come on! You have to see the brilliant side of this. This is huge.”
    With a groan I lay back on the bed, covering my face with my hands. “I know. And, believe me, after giving up on the idea of ever seeing him again, this has thrown me a little. A lot.”
    “You should be dancing around the room in celebration right now!”
    “I want to. But, fuck, if this doesn’t scare me.”
    Lydia sat up straight again and peeled my hands from my face so I couldn’t hide my honest reaction from her.
    “Marnie, level with me here. When it comes to Logan, you’ve always been kind of… reserved. I get that you like him. You’ve always liked him. But lately it seems like you feel more than for him than you want to admit.”
    Heat flooded my cheeks because she was right. What she didn’t understand was that I had to be reserved where Logan was concerned. I didn’t want to admit how long I’d lived with him on my mind. Sure, he was my school girl crush – there was barely a person who grew up with us who didn’t know that, except maybe Logan himself. But you’re supposed to get over school girl crushes. They’re supposed to end the moment you walk out of the school gates for the last time and go your separate ways. That never happened. I’d lied to myself that it was nothing for the last few years, because I couldn’t have feelings for him, could I? We rarely even saw each other in person anymore unless we bumped into each other on a night out. It made me crazy. Sometimes I wanted to reach into my phone and drag him through, or scream, “Come on! Just one coffee. Give me an hour. I just want to see you!” I refused to be that girl. The one who begs, demands. The downside of not being that girl was that I became a different girl. One who lived with doubts and insecurities, who constantly lived on the edge of something she