Free Before Ryan Was Mine (The Remembrance Trilogy - Prequel) by Kahlen Aymes

is open.” I probably should ask them, but I’d rather beg forgiveness than ask permission if it meant Julia would be here in a few hours’ time.
    “Ew. Really, you want me to sleep in Aaron’s room? Dude, that’s weird. It probably smells like a sweaty jock.”
    A smile split across my face as I kept up my flight search. “We have two other rooms, but one is my dad’s study, and Mom is remodeling the other, so you can have my room, if you’d rather.” I winced a little, thinking Julia would find my room juvenile. For sure she’d make fun of the girly posters.
    “I don’t want to inconvenience anyone.”
    “Julia! Shut up and call your old man, will ya? I’m booking the ticket right now.” I found a ticket out that afternoon and then yanked out the printout of my own return itinerary, and booked another seat on the same flight. Her seat wouldn’t be next to mine, but I’d deal with that later.
    “Ryan, wait! I can’t afford this, and I don’t want to ask my dad.”
    “I said: I’m booking the ticket. Consider it my Christmas gift to you. I’ve been struggling with what to get you anyway, so this is perfect!” My blood was racing with excitement and anticipation. Suddenly, the break didn’t seem so mundane after all.
    I ran across the room to the jeans lying in a pile of dirty clothes and began to rummage through the pockets for my wallet and debit card.
    “Ryan, will you wait?” Julia shouted over the computer.
    I bit my lip over a smile as I sat back down at the computer and began to type in the card information. “Better hurry, your flight leaves in three hours.”
    “You’re impossible! I should let you lose your money and stew in your own juice!” She was moving around her room and I could hear a big thump from what was surely her closet. “Ouch!”
    “What happened?”
    “My hiking boots just fell off a shelf and hit me in the head! I don’t know what to bring? Do you get dressed up on Christmas? I don’t have gifts for your parents! I’ll feel like an idiot.”
    “I’ll see you in a few hours. The flight is direct, United 1489 to O’Hare. I’ll be waiting just beyond the gates.”
    “You’re crazy!”
    “This will be great!” I was so excited I could hardly sit still. She said something else while she rummaged through her closet, but I couldn’t catch it.
    “Just stop your mumbling and get your little ass on that plane.” At the sound of Julia’s tinkling laughter, I raced out of my room and down the stairs to inform my mother that my best friend would be with us for the remainder of Christmas break.

    The jet bridge was filled with the sounds of people talking, laughing and the grating whiz of the wheels of the many carry-on cases being carted up to the terminal. Butterflies filled my stomach.
    I had to admit when Ryan suggested I fly to Chicago for Christmas, I was thrilled and filled with excited anticipation. I’d never seen Chicago in the winter, but it was the fact Ryan insisted I come, that was responsible for the nervous adrenaline pumping through my veins. This was Ryan, my best friend. My gorgeous best friend, true, but still, he was like my other half, the calm in my storm, the cream in my coffee. I told myself it was the prospect of meeting his parents that had my stomach all tied up in knots.
    I’d shoved a few changes of clothes and the bare necessities into a carry-on and grabbed a cab to the airport. The fare was fifty dollars, and I charged it on the credit card my dad had given me for emergencies when I started college. I inwardly shrugged.
    This was an emergency. I was dying of boredom at my dad’s and seriously missing the easy camaraderie that Ryan and I shared. It was really the first time we’d been separated since we’d met, beyond a long weekend, and I’d been seriously unprepared for how much I’d miss him. I looked down at my Nike-clad feet and my stomach dropped. I hadn’t had time to shower or change and still wore the tattered jeans