Page 1 of Keeper of Hearts
Chapter One
Gage
"OMG. You should see my dress for the dance!"
Fucking kill me now.
I take a massive bite of my sandwich, stifling an aggravated groan as the throng of girls at my table turns to Victoria Starling, their pain-in-my-ass Queen Bee, ready to hear every detail about this damn dress.
Frankly, I'd rather walk through fire naked than hear about it.
Prom was explicitly created to torment teenage boys. I know this for a fact because I am a teenage boy. And I'm definitely being tormented by the existence of this goddamn dance.
It's all I've heard about for the last two months straight. With the exception of my best friend, Troian Alessi, every woman in my general vicinity has lost her mind over it.
Troian hasn't mentioned it at all.
Ordinarily, this wouldn't be a problem. We rarely spend time talking about bullshit like dances when we're together. But I've been waiting since we started our senior year for her to bring it up so I can ask her to go with me.
We're days away, and she still hasn't uttered a single peep.
Not even after I was nominated for Prom King last week.
It's driving me crazy—both the fact that I was nominated and that Troian refuses to talk about the dance at all.
I know no one else has asked her to go yet.
There's an unspoken rule around here that Troian is off limits to anyone who isn't me. They don't get to hug her or smile at her or take her any-goddamn-where. It's been that way since the day she transferred here at the beginning of our freshman year.
I'm pretty sure I fell in love with her as soon as she stumbled into my path on her first day here. But I was young and dumb and didn't realize that's what was happening.
By the time I figured it out, I was deep in the friend zone.
Have you ever tried to get out of the friend zone once you've gotten yourself stuck in it?
It's a bitch.
And I'm growing a little more desperate every day.
Troian is scary smart…to the point she could have graduated last year, even though she only just turned eighteen last month. Which means sooner or later, she's going to realize that she's a goddess. Sooner or later, she'll realize that she's better than this place and everyone in it. Soon—too fucking soon—she's going to move on to bigger and better things, and I'll be out of chances to make her mine.
I've thought a thousand times about picking her curvy ass up, putting her in my lap, and kissing the shit out of her to make my feelings clear. I'm desperate to know exactly what her lips taste like and what she feels like in my arms. I may actually snap soon if I don't know if she's as sweet coming apart for me in reality as she is in my dream.
I've fantasized a thousand times about fucking her. It's all I think about sometimes. In my mind, I've made her come apart for me all over this school—the cafeteria table, our shared desk in Physics…the little hidden alcove between the lockers and the bathroom. Everywhere.
I'm almost nineteen, and horny all the damn time.
But then I worry that she doesn't feel the same way, and I'll destroy our friendship if I make a move. Or, worse, that being with me will paint a bigger target on her back.
No one else knows, but Troian had a heart transplant when she was a kid. I don't think she even would have told me about it, but three years ago, my little brother had to have open-heart surgery. She shared her secret with me when I was worried my brother was going to die.
Our classmates are assholes. When she first moved here, a lot of them frequently made fun of her weight. I put a stop to that shit in a hurry, but some of them—like Victoria—still treat her like shit because, again, they're assholes who can't think forthemselves. As if it's her fault that the medication she takes for her heart makes her retain weight. Even if the medication wasn't at fault, her weight doesn't define her value.
And, truthfully, they'd probably give her a hard time even if they knew about the transplant. She intimidates them because she's so fucking smart. Intelligence is sexy, but most of these idiots view it as a threat. Probably because they don't have two brain cells to rub together. They're too busy worrying about the next party or who is fucking who to think about anything important.
But the last thing I want to do is make her last two months of high school more difficult when she's already been through so much. She doesn't need anyone else bullying her, and my life is…honestly, it's currently a nightmare.
My mom is a single mom, trying to raise two boys on her own. Even with insurance, covering the cost of my brother's care is impossible some days.
