Page 24 (1/1)

Prologue: Maggie

I wasn’t usually the type of girl who lied

Honest to a fault,on ina hole inside ofthings or keeping secrets Growing up, it used to drive my friends and parents nuts hoould complain about books,that all of the problems could be solved if only characters—or people—wouldn’t keep secrets or lie to each other

“It just creates more problems!” I would say

Which hy it was so very out of character for ht,

But how else was I supposed to get what I wanted?

If , they would lock me in my room for the rest of my life No thanks And part of it I could understand It wouldn’t have been so inity to hi is

Oops?

Look, it wasn’t my fault And it wasn’t Cal’s, either That was his nah Just Cal

Of course, there was so him Cal’ bit He’d knownhe would be able to overlook that when I , but I wasn’t a child anye, and Cal hadn’t seen o My hope was that he would see hter of his friend but as awoman

Because God knew, I’d been thinking of hi for years now

My crush on Cal had, I could adh school He was untouchable then, of course, for multiple reasons Just take your dae of eighteen while I was under it, and a pretty good age gap besides But that hadn’t stoppedhe was sex on a stick and even now, five years later, I still couldn’t shake e and they were all just so… immature They had no passion, no vision, or if they did, it was very… up in the air, they never did anything about it

Cal was the kind of guy who not only had a vision for himself, for his art, but he had the dedication, hard work, and charisma to make it work It took a hell of a lot to make it in the art world and Cal had done it I admired him immensely for that And he always spoke to me as an equal, never as a child, which I’d always appreciated And his eyes, God his eyes They could look gray, or hazel, or even blue depending on the lighting, but when you really looked directly into thereen

I wanted to drown in those eyes Sohi instructions on how fast or slow to go, to tease lide my hands over my skin I’d had to sn pleads for him more times than I could count, his name on my treacherous lips I couldn’t wait for the day when I could beg him for real

Tonight—tonight if all ell, I would get to Finally

It was Thanksgiving, and traditionally, Cal would have it alone I didn’t know the details, since I’d been a kid for most of it, but I knew that Cal didn’t really have any fa deal out of family holidays But this yeararound on his own—my dad’s words, not mine

“I do not reed to co to put the food on the table while Cal did the place settings and I tried not to climb him like I was a rabid squirrel and he was a tree

He was as handsoed like a fine wine I’d seen pictures of him in his early twenties and frankly I preferred him now In those old pictures, he looked kind of like a puppy Like he hadn’t finished growing into hie hands, his tall stature His dark hair would flop all over the place and he had a goofy look to him