Renna Rose Lancaster is the girl people stare at like she belongs in a glass case, a life airbrushed into unattainable perfection.
But Renna knows her life is nothing but a golden prison coated in pretty lies that keep her muted and small.
Her day...
"I'm not supposed to want you; I'm not supposed to care, and yet I spend my time dreaming of all that we could share.
I'm not supposed to think about you or wonder where you've been, but no matter how I fight it, thoughts of you sneak in.
I'm not supposed to ponder where you are each night, but you creep into my vision when the stars shine bright.
I'm not supposed to yearn so, always wishing you were here, but I hunger for your kisses, and I long to draw you near.
I'm not supposed to imagine where you are and what you do. I know I shouldn't cater to a single thought of you.
I'm not supposed to need you. I know these things, I do. And yet I can't help myself, because I fell in love with you."
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I should've run.
Honest.
The second I walked into this cursed party and saw her standing there with the brightest smile in my sky, something in me hissed run.
But I didn't.
Because I'm obviously a genius.
Now I had eighteen years' worth of trouble sitting on my lap like she'd decided chair, oxygen, and personal space were optional concepts.
Renna wasn't moving at all.
Not one millimetre.
I'd been timing it in my head like a fucking idiot-twenty-six minutes of her plastered against me. Twenty-six minutes of me pretending I was a normal functioning human and not some feral disaster who could actually feel his sanity melt.
She was straddling me fully—legs bracketing my hips, knees tucked into my sides, arms around my shoulders, face right under my jaw.
My palms were on her waist, barely touching her.
Careful.
Careful in a way that didn't belong to me.
The kind of careful that made me feel like a fraud.
Her hair brushed my nose. I didn't even have to sniff like some creep. I knew that scent already—from the library, from before I even knew she was Renna bloody Lancaster. It'd lodged itself inside me like a parasite, like my brain had decided yep, this is ours now.
