Read Online The Unloved by Jennifer Snyder - Free Book Online Page A

moment. My heart pounded at the sight of her and a smile stretched on my face. I’d gotten what I’d wanted and the night felt complete because of it.
    “So, do you really have to get to bed or were you just saying that?” My stomach twisted into knots as the words spewed from my lips. Rejection right now would burn like a mother.
    I watched as she reached up and tucked a stray strand of her reddish hair behind her ear. There was an uncertainty that creased her forehead and drew her eyebrows together. The tension-filled silence as I waited for her response was killing me.
    “If you don’t want to, it’s fine.” I rubbed the back of my neck with my hand and dropped my eyes. “Mom bought me this Wii today and Blake helped me hook it up before we left for the party. I figured maybe we could check out the games that came with it. Hang out…like old times, I mean.”
    I didn’t know why I added that last part. I didn’t want to hang out with her like old times, like when we were little kids, like the strictly friendship way we had before I left. I wanted more, but the indecision on her face made me nervous. It made me want to persuade her to not leave my sight just yet because I needed to figure out what that emotion in her eyes was—the emotion she was throwing up to block out the depth that I knew she felt for me. The depth that was mutual.
    “Like old times, huh?” She glanced at the night sky and then over her shoulder to her house. “I guess I could do that, for a while.” She smiled and started toward me.
    “All right.” I grinned.
    We walked side by side, my hands crammed into my pockets and her arms folded across her chest, toward my house.
    “My mom’s at work. Someone called in tonight so she offered to pick up their shift for them,” I said as I fumbled with the lock. I’d never been so nervous before around Jules and it was beginning to freak me out a little.
    I opened the front door and stepped aside so she could go in first. A whiff of her shampoo glided to my nose and I had to force myself to control my hormone-induced thoughts. She smelled so sweet. Not like strawberries or peaches or some funky flower like most girls, but like coconuts. Jules smelled like summer to me, the sweetness of summer. My mind instantly flashed to sunblock and bathing suites…bikinis…Jules in a bikini. Control. Control.
    I closed the front door behind her and cleared my throat, knowing I needed to push those thoughts away. And fast.
    “It still looks exactly like I remembered it,” she said, glancing around the living room. “Except for this, this is new.” She pointed to a picture of a sunset above the TV.
    “Yeah. Mom hung that up there the other day. She said that a sunset is the one thing beautiful you can always count on at the end of the day. That no matter how hard or trying your day has been, you can always end it with beauty if you watch the sunset,” I said, turning my gaze back to her.
    “I like that. I’ll have to remember it,” she said, without taking her eyes off the picture.
    “So, what game do you want to play?” I asked, bending down to look for the first time at what actually came with the thing. I had to shift my thoughts to something else again because if I didn’t I was liable to pull her into me and kiss her any moment.
    “Umm.” Jules sat down on the floor and glanced at the box. “I don’t know. What does it come with?”
    “Looks like just this one. It’s got bowling, baseball, tennis, and boxing. Which do you want to play?”
    “Bowling, definitely bowling.” She crinkled her nose and I laughed, remembering suddenly how much she hated sports. “What?” she asked.
    “Nothing. I just forgot how cute you are when you crinkled your nose because you hate something.”
    Jules rolled her eyes. “You say that like you remember so much about me.”
    Her words wounded me a little, but I kept smiling to mask it. She wasn’t the only one who had perfected the