ORPHIC

"Because I'm in love with you!"
I stumble back from the force of the words, as if moving away will change the fact that this particular sentence is possibly one of the worst things to say this loud. I don't study him long enough to see if he feels an ounce of guilt for dumping this on top of everything.
Even if he does, it wouldn't change my feelings.
"Because I'm still in love with you," he goes on, his voice half drowned under my daze. "And I don't know how not to be."
My eyes fall past his heaving, glistening chest, past his tensed abdomen, to the space between us that might as well have been an inch wide with the way he is looking at me. Like all he wants was tear off my clothes and do something neither of us would regret.
I am all too familiar with it.
"You can't say that," I shake my head, my voice barely above a whisper. "Not when I love someone else."

^.^.^.^.^.^.^.^.^.^.^.^.^.^.^.^.

Summer romances are easy. Everybody knows the stakes.
Have a good time. Don't get attached. And say goodbye once the season's up.

Luke Holden knows perfectly well what knock your breath out, make you want to settle down, movie love looks like.
Last summer at home before college, he isn't looking to find it.
Especially in the girl who is all unexpected surprises, loose dresses, a highly unavailable heart and won't even tell him her full name.
But he does...
And once he had it, he has no plans of letting go.