Page 2 of Before You Fell

Everyone does.

He has that stupid gift. The ability to walk into a room with a grin too big for his face and somehow make people forgive him before he has even done anything wrong.

And Phoenix is always one breath away from doing something wrong.

I slam my notebook shut.

Too late. He sees the motion.

His dark hazel eyes drop to my hands, then lift back to my face, and his grin sharpens as if he has just found the best kind of trouble.

Shit.

He has grown taller over the summer. He moves across the yard with loose limbs and cocky shoulders, as if the world has never once landed a punch.

But it has. I know it has.

Phoenix drops down beside me on the blanket, because he has never asked permission to exist in my space. He just arrives, takes up half the air, and acts shocked when anyone notices.

His grin stays right where it is as his knee bumps mine.

“What are you hiding?”

“Nothing,” I reply, shoving the notebook under my leg.

“What did you write, Wills?” he asks.

“Nothing.”

His eyes drop to my thigh and a slow grin pulls at his mouth. “That is a very committed nothing.”

“It’s private.”

Phoenix reaches for my notebook.

I twist away. “No.”

His brows lift. Dark hazel eyes, gold in the sunlight, full of mischief and something sharper underneath. “Come on.”

“No.”

“You wrote something.”

“I write things all the time.”

“Yeah, but you’re acting weird about this one.”

“I am not acting weird.”

“You’re hiding it as if it has government secrets in it.”

“It might.”

“You’re thirteen and your mum still cuts the crust off your sandwiches.”

“She does not.”

“She did yesterday.”