All We Know Is Falling: Fall With Me: Volume One by Nicole Thorn Read Free Book Online Page A

now,” he said as the bell rang, “you can’t run from me.” He scooted closer and leaned on the table.
    “You didn’t take the running as a hint?”
    He swept my hair over my shoulder and twisted a lock around his finger. “No. I don’t really buy that.”
    I looked at him and he was still playing with my hair. “What? Rejection?”
    He dropped the lock and it remained curled. “Forced rejection. I don’t think you wanted to run.”
    I laughed through my nose. “I don’t do things that I don’t want to do.”
    “Liar,” he accused me of being. Before I could just leave, he said, “I want you to spend tomorrow with me.”
    Oh no. That was what I was afraid of. I’d never been asked out before, so I had no clue how to let someone down easy. Or at all.
    “I can’t,” I said in a weak voice.
    “Why’s that? Busy”
    “No. I told you before, I don’t want a friend. And spending a whole day with you seems too friendly for me.”
    He turned his whole body to me and looked me in the eye like I was his sole focus. “Well then I guess it’s good that I don’t have any intentions to be your friend.”
    I narrowed my eyes at him. “Then why the Hell do you want to spend the day with me?”
    Both of his eyebrows went up. “Do you not understand what I was asking you?”
    “I guess not,” I said with hostility.
    “Ah, I think I understand. Since your strange little rule against friends is in place, I take it you don’t go out with people, ever. You don’t date?”
    “No,” my voice was flat.
    He looked pleased. “Have you ever?”
    “Personal question.”
    “It is. Answer it,” he ordered me in the most alluring voice I’ve ever heard.
    “No. I’ve never dated.” Number one on my list of do nots… dating. Worse than losing a friend was losing someone I might be in love with. So I simply didn’t take the chance.
    “Good.”
    I tried not to sound angry when I said, “Why?”
    “It means I was right about you. Because that means no one’s touched you.”
    My body got goosebumps with the possibilities of why that would make him glad. But I shut it down.
    “How do you know that?”
    He cocked his head to the side. “Lamb, I know innocence when I see it. Everything about you screams purity.”
    I held back a loud laugh at that. My father is The Devil…nothing about me is innocent.
    “More proof that you don’t know me at all,” I turned away from him. “You are more wrong than you’ll ever know.”
    “That’s not my fault. You keep thwarting my attempts to get to know you.”
    I turned to look at him and I knew my face looked pained judging by the way he was looking back at me. “Hale, if I were to let you…” I stopped to try and figure out how to put it. “Once you get to know who I am, you won’t like what you find there.” I stared down at my hand that was flat on the table.
    “I believe that’s my decision to make,” he said, quiet and calmly. “Not yours.”
    “Too bad.”
    His hand moved close to mine but he didn’t touch me. “Have you ever considered that you’re wrong?”
    “Not for a second,” I whispered. I know what I am and I know how humans react to things like that. I know that when their beliefs are set, they aren’t always open to change them. They try and rationalize or deal…but it always ends with them running.
    He closed the distance between our hands. He laid my hand out flat, with my palm facing up. Then he put his hand over mine. “I’m very sorry you think that, Rory. Will you tell me why you do?”
    I looked in his sad grey eyes and saw my own pain reflected back at me. “I can’t.”
    He moved his hand back so he could trace my palm with his fingertips. His hands had paint on them, but I knew it couldn’t have been from yesterday’s class. It had to be newer. “That’s alright. I’ll know one day. And I can wait until you’re willing to tell me. I knew you’d say no to tomorrow before I even asked.”
    “Then why did you?”
    He