Page 1 of Unlucky in Love
Prologue
Taylor
Taylor Pierce told herself she wasn’t nervous. It was just Ryan. Ryan Carter. Emma’s brother. The same boy who once duct-taped her shoelaces together because she wouldn’t stop humming in the car. The same boy who lectured her for eating questionable gas-station sushi and then bought her french fries so she wouldn’t “die of food poisoning.”
Not exactly Prince Charming material.
Except her stomach had been doing backflips ever since Emma mentioned he was home from college. Worse, now that he was sitting on the couch across from her—legs stretched out, hair messier than she remembered, voice deeper—her stomach seemed to have joined Cirque du Soleil.
He looked older. Different. He smelled like soap and travel and something unfairly good.
“You’re staring,” Ryan said without looking up from the magazine in his lap. His mouth tipped in that crooked grin that made her want to throw a pillow at his head.
“I am not,” Taylor lied. She clutched her mug of hot chocolate like it could protect her from making terrible decisions.
“You’ve been staring since I walked in,” he said casually. “Do I have something on my face?”
“Yes. Your whole face.” The words slipped out before she could stop them.
Emma wasn’t even here to bail her out; she’d run upstairs to grab something, leaving Taylor stranded in the living room with the one boy she’d spent years convincing herself she didn’t like.
A slow grin tugged at his mouth, and she hated how much it made her heart cartwheel. “Still a smart mouth, huh?”
Still? He was the one who’d spent her entire childhood tormenting her, hiding her shoes, teasing her about her crush on the lead singer of that terrible boy band, lecturing her for eating gas-station sushi.
He’d been infuriating.
Maddening.
Overprotective.
And somewhere in the middle of all that, he’d also become the boy who carried her backpack when it rained. The boy who scared off jerks at the skating rink. The boy who made her laugh until her ribs ached.
The boy she’d spent years pretending she didn’t like.
Her pulse hammered. Emma was still upstairs. It was just the two of them. Ryan looked older, confident, the kind of guy college girls probably lined up for.
And she was just Taylor. Invisible Taylor. Travel-dreaming Taylor.
But what if…what if she wasn’t invisible?
She told herself to wait. To breathe. To say something normal. But the words slipped out instead: “You know what? Forget it.”
Ryan finally looked up. “Forget what?”
Her heart leapt into her throat.
Say nothing. Laugh it off. Do not be insane.
But clearly, she was insane.
Stark raving mad.
Instead, of letting the moment go, she set her mug down on the coffee table, sat down next to him on the couch, and did what she’d fantasized doing since elementary school.
She kissed him.
It was clumsy. Too fast. A press of lips that screamed seventeen and inexperienced. But it was hers, and for one dizzy second, she swore he kissed her back. His breath hitched, his hand twitched like he might reach for her—
