Free link please 🥺
Chapter 1
Our senior trip was to Universal Studios Hollywood, and my boyfriend was off speaking French with the class It Girl again.
They’d both taken AP French together junior year, so nobody in our group understood a word. I stepped closer to Owen Shaw and caught “she’s too clingy” just as I opened my mouth to ask what they were talking about.
Owen frowned and cut me off without even looking away from Luna Price. “Don’t interrupt. We’re discussing applications. Whatever you need can wait.”
For three days, they’d had an endless supply of “important things” to talk about. Important things that never once got shared in English.
Then Luna laughed and asked him in French, “So when are you planning to dump her?”
Owen kept his voice low. “After the acceptance letters come in.”
They had no idea my grandfather was French.
***
The fireworks burst behind the castle and Owen shook my hand off. My palm went cold and empty, the wind slicing through my fingers so fast I shivered.
Luna stood on his left, adjusting the new headband she’d bought, smiling as she asked if he wanted to hit the last ride.
Owen bent over her phone to look at the map. “We can still make it if we go now. Don’t stress.”
Three minutes earlier, I’d asked him the exact same question. He’d told me the crowds were insane, he was wiped, and to drop it.
Somebody behind us started running their mouth. “Dude, whose girlfriend are you with right now?”
Owen glanced up, his grin thinning a little. “Relax. It’s Luna’s first time here. I’m just showing her the route.”
Luna waved her hands immediately. “Don’t say that. Sienna’s going to get upset.”
The words were thoughtful, but her eyes curved toward me like a dare.
I hitched my slipping bag strap higher on my shoulder. Inside were three water bottles, two rain ponchos, a tin of his favorite mints, and the hoodie he’d peeled off in the heat and shoved at me that afternoon.
Before the trip, Owen had told me Universal was crowded and I needed to stay close to him. For three days, I’d been the one left trailing behind.
That morning in line, Luna’s shoelace came undone and Owen crouched down to block the crowd for her.
At lunch, she announced she couldn’t stand cilantro, so he picked every speck of it out of her bowl. When it rained that afternoon and she sneezed, he handed her my poncho.
The poncho he’d bought me the night before, saying he didn’t want me getting soaked. He’d stood outside the hotel with his hair half wet, grinning as he shoved the bag into my arms. “Sienna, don’t you dare cry.”
I almost did.