“Hope you don’t mind spending all night with me,” I say, peering up at him under the whimsical glow of snow covering the windshield.
“You know how the saying goes,” Emory says, placing a kiss on my cheek, then my temple, then my lips again. “The best date is one where she gets dressed up for another guy, but ends up in a hotel with you.”
I roll my eyes. “I don’t think that’s a saying.”
“Well don’t fault me,” he whispers between kisses. “You’re the relationship expert here. And although I am just a lowly, but reformed, heartbreaker, I think we’re doing a bang-up job. The road trip, the snow—it’s all a perfect recipe for the start of something real.”
“Never thought I’d hear you talk about something real,” I say, watching intently to see if his reaction is genuine.
“Never thought I’d give a shit about what happens in Break Up Support Group,” he says. His fingers lace into mine, and he pulls my hand up to his lips. “And then I met you.”
Emory and I each hold a plastic key card for our adjoining rooms in the Texas-themed Best Western hotel. My pulse races a little more with each level the elevator climbs, and although I’m standing so close to him, our shoes and legs and hips are touching, I look only at the card in my hand. Emory taps his key card on top of my head.
“Someone’s quiet.”
“Can you blame me?” I ask, just as the elevator dings and the doors swing open. He grabs my hand. We step onto the maroon and tan carpet, following the signs down the hallway that match the ropes glued to the handrails down the center of the walls. Room 410 and 411 have doors right next to each other, marked by a gilded number sign in the middle of a set of plastic deer antlers.
Emory slips his key into the door slot and the handle lights up green. He tosses me a playful smile. “First one to the secret door wins,” he says, and then he pushes open his door and disappears inside.
“Ah, crap,” I say, rushing to open my door. It clicks open, and I burst inside the hotel room, running straight past the cowboy hat lampshade and to the locked door against the left wall. I twist the deadbolt and pull open the door.
Emory’s standing there, his hands pressing into each side of the door frame. The little compass charm on his bracelet catches the light from his room. “You lose,” he says.
I wrap my arms around his neck and pull him down to my level, kissing his ridiculously soft lips. “You cheated.”
“So …” he says, sliding his hands down my waist and settling them on my hips. “Did you see that complimentary nacho machine in the lobby?”
I grin. “Yeah I did.”
We help ourselves to nachos and a free bag of peanuts and several bottles of water from the hotel’s lobby. On the way back to our rooms, Emory takes a picture of me sitting on a giant ceramic cow in the hallway and embarrasses the hell out of me by saving the photo as his phone’s wallpaper.
“You owe me a stupid photo of you now,” I say a while later when we’re back in Emory’s room, and the nacho trays are nearly empty. “One that’s so awful it makes you look as dorky as I do on that stupid cow.”
“That’s impossible,” he says, shaking his head and licking cheese off his index finger. “I’m so damn handsome that every photo of me is a perfect one.”
“I change my mind,” I say, screwing the plastic cap back onto my water bottle. I sit on the edge of his bed and fashion a pretend serious look on my face. “I want to break up.”
“Fine,” he says, walking over me and wedging his legs in between my knees. He bends forward, resting his hands on the bed on either side of me. “I’ll just ask you to be my girlfriend again.”
Heat swells around my insides, and it takes everything I have not to wrap my arms around him and pull him on top of me. “You never asked me in the first place,” I whisper.
“I was getting there,” he whispers back, his lips grazing my ear.
And then he pulls away, standing straight up. The sudden absence of his nearness makes my stomach hurt. I frown all dramatic and puppy like.
“You’re really hot,” he says, rubbing at his eyebrow. “Even when you’re pouting.”
I lean back on my elbows and curl my bottom lip even further out. “What about now?” I ask through my lips.
His eyes sparkle, and he crawls on top of me, wrapping an arm around my waist. In one ridiculously swift move, he slides me up the bed, depositing my head on top of the fluffy hotel pillow.
“Seems like you’ve done that before,” I say.
His dark eyes bore into mine. “I don’t want to talk about the past,” he says, kissing me quick and urgently. “I only care about the future. Our future.” His hair falls into his eyes, and I tuck it behind his ears.
“I’m listening,” I say.
“Do you want to take a chance on me?” he asks, rolling over to his side. He trails his fingers down my arm. “Be my girlfriend? Do the whole relationship thing?”
“I’ve wanted that for longer than I care to say.” Heat fills my cheeks, and I look at his chest, avoiding his eyes. “You scare me.”
“You scare me,” he says, matter-of-factly. “More than anything. More than global warming, or the fear that I’ll be stuck in this town for my whole life. I’ve always been able to cut ties with anyone or anything. But I can’t get you out of my head.”
I roll to my side, facing him. “Having feelings for someone isn’t a bad thing.”
Our eyes meet, and he gives me a sad smile. Then he turns over to his back and tucks his hands under his head while he stares at the ceiling. “Come here,” he says, gesturing with a jerk of his head for me to join him. I slide over and nestle my head in the crook of his shoulder, resting my cheek on his chest.
He wraps an arm around me and his fingers twist into my hair. “What’s on your mind?” I ask, because the way he works his jaw tells me he’s trying to work up the courage to tell me something. “You can tell me,” I say, tracing an invisible circle on his shirt with my finger.
He swallows and his chest rises. “My parents have an open marriage. It’s been that way since …” He sighs. “Forever, I guess. I can remember being five years old and my parents would get a babysitter on Friday nights, and they’d leave together but come home separately. It made them so happy. They lived for Friday nights. It was their date nights, but they were off dating other people.”
I look up at him, but he’s staring blankly at the ceiling above us, his fingers stroking my hair as he talks. “When I was in sixth grade, I skipped soccer practice and came home early to find my dad banging some chick half his age in the kitchen.”
“Whoa,” I say, unable to stop the reaction.
He snorts. “Tell me about it. So anyway, after they’d gotten dressed and the girl went home, my dad explained to me—not about sex or anything—but that he and Mom date other people, and it’s okay because they agreed to it. My mom told me same kind of story a few years later. It’s all cool with them, and I was supposed to be cool with it, too.”
“Is that why you date around so much?”
He waits a beat before answering. “My dad will tell you that relationships are like business transactions. He says that he and Mom run a successful real estate business and that together, they provide for us and keep me in a brand new car and keep Mom in her Botox and designer clothing. He says that’s how to stay happy in life—find someone who can be your best friend but bang whoever else you want. It never really sat right with me, not even when I tried it by dating three girls in seventh grade.”
I make a gagging sound, and he leans over, kissing my hair before talking again. “What my parents do in their relationship makes them happy. And I finally see that I don’t have to follow Dad’s advice. I can do my own thing and date the way I want to. It is really easy to text ten girls on a Friday night. But that’s not what I want to do.”
“Is this the part where you tell me what you want to do?” I ask. My eyes are heavy with exhaustion, but I watch him intently.
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He smiles and runs his fingers through my hair. It sends chills down my back, and I shudder, pulling closer into his embrace. “Isla, I want to be with you and only you. For as long as you’ll have me. You’re the girl who saved me from the void of loneliness. I want you and I need you.”
“I want you and I need you,” I murmur, leaning into his kiss.
“It’s a deal, then,” he says.
“The support group will have a field day over this.”
He shrugs as his hands explore my body, pulling me tightly against his muscled chest. “We can be their first success story. We’ll let Bastian take all the credit for reforming us so that we can love again.”
“Sounds good to me,” I say, yawning. I close my eyes and snuggle into him, reveling in the feel of his arms around me. I take a deep breath, breathing him in and soaking up all of his affection, and then I fall asleep.
In the morning, I wake to Emory’s arms still around me. Sunlight filters into the room, a narrow, wintery slice of light through the curtains. We brush our teeth with cheap hotel toothbrushes and head down to the lobby, loading our plates up with every type of breakfast food available.
“I feel like a cowboy in this place,” Emory says as he lifts a Texas-shaped waffle out of the iron at the Make Your Own Waffle station. He puts it on my plate and makes himself another one. I cover mine in syrup and whipped cream, and we sneak our food up to the hotel room and chow down like we haven’t eaten in forever.
“I love continental breakfast,” I say, stabbing my fork into a grape. My other hand holds a piece of bacon, and I alternate which hand I eat out of.
Emory nods. “I’m going to stay at hotels with free breakfast everywhere I go.”
“Where all do you plan on going?”
He shrugs. “The whole world.”
“That sounds exciting,” I say, staring at my bacon.
“Don’t make that face, you’re coming with me.”
“Oh yeah?” I say, getting up and walking over to the balcony window. I pull back the curtains, preparing to make some kind of joke, but my words catch in my throat. “Oh my God,” I whisper as I stare out at the city of Dallas, all covered in snow.
Emory pads across the carpet. He stands behind me, one hand on my lower back. “It’s beautiful,” he says, gazing out at the view. “Even better than last night.”
“I’ve finally seen snow,” I say, putting a hand on my hip. “I feel accomplished. Thank you for bringing me here.”
He spins me around and grabs my chin, tilting my head up to his. “This is just the start,” he says, his eyes blazing with the hint of adventure. “Winter break, I’m taking you to the Pacific Ocean. And this summer … we’re going everywhere.”
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This is sometimes the hardest part of writing a book. Getting to the end, (finally) and remembering everyone for whom I am grateful. The shiny lightbulb of an idea that became this book happened after Sunday night dinner with the family. We were driving home, and we went past Klein High School, a four story mammoth of a building that took my breath away. Having grown up in a small town, this school inspired me. It made me wonder what it’d be like to attend a place so impossibly massive that you’d never be able to know everyone’s name.
And that’s how Isla Rush was born.
So, thank you to Klein, Texas and its large population. (Also, I hear their police officers are pretty hot.)
To the Swoon Romance family of awesome writers, thanks for being so encouraging and supportive! Georgia McBride, thank you for choosing my book. Thanks to you and GMMG, my little book is a real, live thing, with a book cover that takes my breath away.
Deirdre Riordan Hall is my absolute favorite person to send Crazy Writer Emails to. Thanks for chugging through this literary adventure with me. To Susan Connally, who read each chapter of this book immediately after I wrote it—you might be crazier than I am, and I mean that in the best way. Thanks to Christina Channelle, author friend and genius, who gave me the special snowflake term when I needed Emory to say something particularly arrogant.
I am especially grateful for the following people, who, were they teenagers in high school, would totally have a secret lunch group with me: Felicia Morgan, Jessica Brooks, A. N. Willis, R. J. Ross, Sophie Lira, Kristina Staton, and Cassandra Giovanni.
I have so much love for book bloggers and all they do for the YA community, so thank you all—you know who you are. Blogger or not, if you leave reviews on books, then you are the best sort of person. Thanks also to my junior high readers who make me feel cool: Sophia, Paris, Lacey, and Kylie.
Thanks to Barry and Cheryl, who are the reason I’m where I am in my writing career. I couldn’t do this without your generosity and encouragement. Finally, to Chris, and your dorky weather app. There is a piece of you in every hot boy I write into my stories. Thanks for being my hero.
Hallee, and Whitney, you two are my favorites. Thanks for being you.
CHEYANNE YOUNG
Cheyanne Young is a native Texan with a fear of cold weather and a coffee addiction that probably needs an intervention. She loves books, sarcasm, and collecting nail polish. After nearly a decade of working in engineering, Cheyanne now writes books for young adults. She doesn’t miss a cubicle one bit.
Cheyanne lives near the beach with her daughter and husband, one spoiled rotten puppy, and a cat that is most likely plotting to take over the world.
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Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Acknowledgements
About the Author
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The Breakup Support Group Page 23