Free Hear Me Now by Melyssa Winchester Page B

my own making in wanting to tell Cadence the truth.
    As long as I can keep my mouth shut with this girl that seems to know more about me than I do, I’ll be just fine.
    Thing is, I can’t do that. She’s sitting there reading her book, the pages all bent and worn, like she’s read it multiple times and I’m kind of interested in exactly what it’s about.  I’m so pathetic right now that I’m willing to listen to her tell me about some stupid book I’ll never read just so she’ll give me the time of day again.
    “Can I see what you’re reading?” I ask and when she doesn’t look up or even acknowledge that she’s heard me, I try again.
    “Cadence. Can I see your book?”
    What the hell is with this girl? Is she still pissed about what happened Monday so she’s purposely ignoring me? Considering I got her to talk to me a couple seconds ago, there’s no way she can be all that upset. I gotta figure if she hated me she wouldn’t have said a word to me this morning, but she did, so what the hell is with her now?
    Reaching across and tapping her on the shoulder even though it causes my ribs an enormous amount of pain, I watch as she jumps back in the seat. She must have been more into the book than I thought. It looks like I freaked the hell out of her.
    When she settles and her shoulders go from rigid to relaxed, her eyes catch mine and I try one more time to get her to talk to me. Now that she’s looking at me, there’s no way she can ignore me the way she just did.
    “Can I see what you’re reading?”
    Her eyebrows raise and she smiles weakly, closing the book after bending the top of the page down, marking her location and passing it over to me. Reaching out to take it, my hands brushing softly over hers and my body tenses with the shock that takes place. Shaking it off, believing it to be something related to the amount of times she’s run her fingers through her hair since she got here, I look down at the cover of the book and I’m surprised.
    I expected to see some kind of romance, since that seems to be what most girls read when I do pay them enough attention to notice, but what’s in front of me now is as far from romance as you can get. It’s a fantasy novel, science fiction I think, and the very last thing I expected to see someone like her reading.
    Shit; I know absolutely nothing about this girl.
    I feel her eyes staring a hole into the side of my face as I’m looking at the book so I turn back to her and hold it back out for her to take.
    “You like this kind of stuff?
    She nods as she takes the book back and I press forward the minute I feel her eyes back on me.
    “Didn’t think many girls read science fiction.”
    She pulls the paper out and as much as I don’t wanna do it, I fe el the frustration growing watching her write on it. I figured she was like Isabelle with the way she always writes everything out, but I’d been hoping I was wrong and she would open her mouth and speak to me. I know I haven’t exactly earned it, but she’s gotta know by now that anything she did say wouldn’t be a waste of breath like she said the first day.
    As she reaches up to hand the paper out to me, I decide to go for broke and ask her why she won’t speak.
    “Are you planning on speaking to me or are we just gonna do this forever?”
    Bringing the paper back to the desk, she starts writing on it again, obviously answering my question and after a few minutes of her scribbling away on the paper, I’m getting anxious with how badly I want her to finish so I can read it.
    I have no idea what the hell is going on with me lately. I haven’t had any contact with this girl for two days, yet she’s the first thing that comes to mind before I go into the fight from hell and now I’m sitting here practically dying inside to read what she’s writing to me. I shouldn’t give two shits but it seems to be all I care about.
    Getting to know her, it’s supposed to be a game. A way to keep me occupied,