Page 36 of Roman and the Hopeless Romantic
Jesse hadn’t seemed to notice her red eyes. Honesty, Cass. She lifted her chin, meeting Roman’s gaze. “Yes.”
“Oh. Are you okay?”
“I’m not sure.” The words came out easier because she didn’t think about them ahead of time.
Roman shuffled his bare feet. “Do you… can I help?”
“Maybe. But not tonight.”
He nodded, his shoulders deflating. “Sweet dreams, Cass.”
“Roman,” she called to his retreating back.
He froze, probably not used to hearing her call for him. “Yeah, Cass?”
“Good game tonight.” He’d played just as well as he always did. Nothing could stop Roman out on the ice.
He met her eyes once more. “Thanks.”
She nodded, letting him walk away. Crawling out of bed, she flipped the lights off and laid back down. Her fingers found her Kindle under the pillow, allowing her to escape into someone else’s love story once more.
As she tapped the screen, a smile curved her lips. Honesty. Not thinking. She could do this.
* * *
Why couldn’tthe real world be like a novel? The characters had it so easy. They spoke to each other with candor and emotion, nothing holding them back. That didn’t work in real life.
But maybe it could.
Cade moved in, wanting to feel, to taste. To him, a kiss was more than a simple action, it was a promise.
“Promise,” Cassie scoffed to herself in the dark. She loved romance as much as the next girl, but tonight something in her hated how they glorified a simple act. She’d seen her brother kiss a lot of girls, but none of them meant anything before Charlie. A kiss was just a kiss. A single moment in time. It didn’t foretell the future or promise good things to come.
She sighed. They were so going to kick her out of the hopeless romantic club. Not that there actually was a hopeless romantic club, but it would be cool. More poor fools like her who’d been taken in by these sappy books and duped into thinking they meant something.
Whoa… was this that honesty thing working on her? She laughed at the ridiculousness of the idea. She’d never lied to herself, and she couldn’t explain why her favorite book suddenly irritated her so much.
Maybe she was just sick of living in a fantasy.
Her stupid anxiety and stupid-stupidness (give her a break, okay?) kept her trapped in this cage with only romance novels as her way out.
But what if she wanted to be the person in love? What if she wanted someone to kiss her as if there was no one else who could make the world spin around her?
Anger burned through her, and she flung her Kindle across the room. It hit the wall with a crack and thudded to the ground, followed by one of her pictures from the wall.
Cassie scrambled from the bed and felt her way to the wall in the dark. Narrow streams of moonlight filtered through her window, courtesy of the full moon hanging in the clear sky outside.
She needed air. Now. Pushing the window up, she inhaled the fresh air, reveling in the post-storm feel of it. Storms caused a lot of destruction around them, but they left behind a feeling of calm, a beautiful world with a clean slate.
She glanced up at the moon, wishing she could see the stars through the filtered streetlights. At the beach, they’d shine overhead.
Cassie smiled as she remembered her mom waking her up every year in the wee hours of the first day of summer while the world still slept in darkness. They’d drive to the beach and sit in the sand, gazing up at the stars with the waves crashing on the shore.
Those were perfect days.
Light reflected off broken glass on the floor, and Cassie bent to pick up the frame, careful to get each shard and thankful none of it shattered. She didn’t know what had come over her when she threw her Kindle.
The picture in her hands was of her mom grinning by the pond in their backyard. Once upon a time, people exclaimed how much Cassie looked like her. She touched her smile. They had little in common in terms of looks, which was why those people stuck in her mind. Where Cassie’s hair was darker, her mom’s was fair. Where Cassie’s skin lacked color, her mom’s had it in spades.
