Read Online Untouched A Cedar Cove Novella by Melody Grace - Free Book Online

wraps her arms around me in a quick hug. “Be careful, OK?” she whispers, face pressed against my chest.
    “What do you mean?”
    “This girl… she’s a summer girl, right?” Brit tilts her face up to me, eyes sad. “That means she’s leaving. They all leave, in the end.”
    I break the hug, and shove her gently towards the hall. “Don’t worry, I’ll be fine.” But my words catch in my throat, and the question lingers, long after she trails back to bed, and I’m alone in the dark kitchen.
    Just one week, and already, I’m in so deep with Juliet, I can’t see the surface. But what happens next week, and the week after?
    What happens when summer’s over?

J ULIET
    My mom loses it. I've never seen her so mad.
    Dad smirks his way through it the way he always does, like I'm just a joke to him, but the minute the deputy leaves, mom flips out. She yells and screams about responsibility, and strangers, and wandering off in the dark alone.
    I stand, arms folded, and take it. Nothing they say can ruin the warmth I have blazing from my chest, a fierce glow of joy radiating out through my entire body, surrounding me with safety and hope.
    Emerson.
    Emerson.
    Only him.
    "Do you know what could have happened to you?" Mom is still yelling. She's wrapped in a threadbare bathrobe, pale and drawn in the 3AM kitchen light. For the first time, I feel a pang of guilt that I left her to worry alone.
    “I was fine," I reassure her. "Emerson would never let anything happen to me."
    I hurry upstairs to bed before they can quiz me anymore. When I come down the next morning – braced for more lectures and yelling and lord know what other parental disappointment – they say nothing. I eat breakfast in silence, suspicious, listening to mom chatter about a farmer’s market in the next town, and the family bike ride we can all take along the coast. I wait for the catch, but none comes.
    “What do you think?” Mom asks me with a nervous smile. I look from her to dad, who is sitting there, totally disinterested, reading the newspaper. They've clearly made some deal, or, more likely, mom has decided that this is all teenage rebellion, and that making a big deal over it will only drive me faster into Emerson's arms.
    “Fine.” I answer shortly. I'm already counting the minutes until I can see him again, but after the look of panic on her face last night, I don't want to cause her any more grief. “Whatever you want sounds great.”
    I spend the next couple of days sneaking texts to Emerson, under mom’s constant supervision. I know I'm eighteen now, and technically free to do whatever I want, but there's something so desperate about her mothering that the guilty part of me finds it easier to give in. Carina as good as ignores her these days. My sister spends all her time out tanning on the beach, bitching to her friends on the phone about how bored she is. And dad? Well, he's either sleeping off a hangover, or quietly drinking his way to a new one, sitting on the porch with a thick novel and a Long Island iced tea, “since it is vacation, after all.”
    I don't care. I don't care about anything now, not with Emerson flooding my memories, taking up every free corner of my mind. I find myself drifting off, lost in the thought of us together on the beach that night. It takes my breath away, every time. I can be rinsing dishes at the sink, or standing in line at the 7/11 for milk, and in the blink of an eye, I’ll be gone, back there again. The warm sand pressing into my back, Emerson’s hard body pressed down the length of me. All day, I can feel the burning imprint of his hands on my skin: the soft tease of his fingertips, tracing down my torso; the possessive graze against my breast. I have to snap out of my reverie and catch my breath, blushing furiously, trying to keep the memories at bay until I'm alone in my room and can let the scene play out to its end: Emerson's jaw clenched with tension as his fingers work their sweet