Free With This Heart by R. S. Grey

cutest brown-haired boy in all of the woods. Unless, of course, Orlando Bloom was also camping there.
    “ I think I see a big dork next to the bathrooms,” I joked, feeling an immense relief now that I knew I wouldn’t be lost in the woods forever.
    He chuckled and I saw his face pop up to look for me. It didn’t take him long.
    “ What a coincidence, I see a lost gypsy girl walking toward me,” he squinted through the darkness, “…in polka dot pajamas. And she has an urn in hand, so it’s hard to tell if she’s going for a good-girl or a gothic-type look?”
    I burst out laughing as I stepped closer. He was too much.
    “ You’re too much.”
    “ Thanks,” he smiled.
    I was only a few feet away from him then.
    “ It wasn’t a compliment.”
    He pressed end on the call as I stepped right in front of him.
    “ You promised me s’mores,” I said with a smile.
    He grinned and we started to walk back toward camp.
    “ Yeah. I thought I was going to have to eat them all while you got dragged away by mountain lions.”
    I hip-checked him, except our difference in height made it so that I ended up just hitting my butt on his upper thigh. So smooth.
    “ You were going to eat them even though I went missing?” I asked, feigning shock.
    He shook his head and wrapped his arm around my shoulders, bringing me into his side. “Oh, Abby. Of course I would have. What was I meant to do? Just leave the s’mores at our campsite? That’s ludicrous.”
     

CHAPTER EIGHT
    By the time we crammed ourselves into the tent, I was full of s’mores and thoroughly sweltering. Roasting by the fire hadn’t been the best idea in ninety-degree weather, but it was definitely worth it for melted chocolate. The last thing I wanted to do was crawl inside my sleeping bag, so I just lazily fell on top of it— making a big THUMP sound. My limbs relaxed out around me, and in the next moment, Beck mimicked my pose on top of his sleeping bag as well.
    “ This is the life,” I said, glimpsing the dark shadows of the night through the tent.
    “ Abby Mae, I think you might be right about that.”
    I rolled over onto my side and watched him laying there. “How old are you?”
    He looked at me with such earnest concentration that I had to consider if I’d asked something else. Then he responded, “Between 30 or 40.”
    I laughed. “What?”
    He shrugged. “I don’t sleep much. The average person sleeps one third of their lifetime, so I figure I’ve lived about twice as long as everyone else my age.”
    “ So you’re twenty?”
    “ Twenty-one. You?”
    “ Hmm…I guess ten or eleven,” I answered, playing his game.
    His eyebrows shot up. “Jeez, you must be quite the snoozer.”
    I sighed. “I was in and out of the hospital my whole life until a few months ago, so I slept a lot,” I admitted, instantly thinking of the scar beneath my tank top.
    “ Oh, wow,” he answered, still facing the roof of the tent and letting my declaration take hold. I knew it would change things between us, but he would have found out eventually.
    “ I don’t think it works the same for you,” he declared, rolling over to face me. His t-shirt stretched over his chest and in the lantern light he looked like a dream.
    “ Why not?”
    “ I don’t think having a life-threatening illness would take away years of your age. I think you might be wiser than the rest of us.”
    Maybe he was right. I knew what it was like to go to sleep at night worrying that everything would be the “last” thing in my life: the last time I ate dinner, the last time I hugged my parents, the last time I opened my eyes, the last time I heard someone say my name. But then I thought of all the things I had yet to experience. I didn’t know what it felt like to be normal. What it felt like to go on a date or attend high school and go to prom. This was my first time traveling anywhere without my parents.
    “ Penny for your thoughts,” he asked, pulling me out of my reverie.