Renata Santos doesn't expect her heart to flutter when she catches a boy stealing flowers out of her backyard. But as she unravels his reputation, she realizes puppy-eyed delinquent Isaac Marshall may just be the sunshine she needs to turn her life...
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H A W T H O R N
[crataegus monogyna] ➳ hope.
"LOOK, A BUTTERFLY."
On my skateboard, I sped up the sidewalk, fast enough that whatever Isaac pointed to was already behind us. He jogged to keep up with me, and shot me an irritated look once he was at my side.
"Sorry," I said, slowing down. "I missed it."
He pointed again into midair.
I squinted, and in a streak of light that poured from between the trees, a monarch butterfly fluttered onto a yellow leaf. Isaac moved closer and I edged along with him, until the pattern on its wings and the arc of its antennae came into perfect focus.
His lips curved playfully, his dimples snatching shadows as he turned away from the sun. He blew a stream of air at the butterfly's wings, prompting them to flap and the butterfly to disappear behind a tangle of tree branches. I rolled my eyes, disinterested once the creature flew away.
"Hey." Isaac jostled my ribs. I quit skating ahead and he captured my forearm, sliding his fingers around my wrist. "You've been acting weird since we got out of the counselor's office."
"Have I?" His brows snagged into a frown and I sighed. "Our meeting wasn't exactly the highlight of my day."
That was an understatement. Between printing off forms for my parents to sign and interrogating me about my good grades, our school counselor — an elderly woman with glasses on a string around her neck — had managed to dislodge whatever screws I had been using to keep my confidence in place.
"She kept asking about the fire." I flicked a look at Isaac as I said this, but he only wore his default expression — that small, worn smile that hung in balance between curiosity and sadness. "How much I think about what happened, how I've recovered, if moving to a new town has affected me in ways I haven't told my parents yet."
"You're used to these kinds of questions."
"Yeah." I looked away. "But things feel different now."
"How are things different?"
I was too embarrassed to say that things were different because of him, but that was the truth. He was the only person who knew about Anthony, and he was one-hundred percent on my side. Isaac had given me hope that if my parents were ever to hear the sordid story, they would understand.
And for some reason, that made me feel even guiltier about the fact that I still hadn't tried to tell them.
"It's complicated," I said, and he nodded, not pressing the issue. But his silence spoke volumes, and without even thinking about it, I grinned.
Isaac draped his arm over my shoulder, half-hugging me as we approached the intersection just ahead of my house. Apparently my grin had tipped the scale, because his smile was no longer dipped in sadness. It stretched all the way across his face, as obvious as a change in the weather.
