Beginning of Forever (Heaven Hill #7) by Laramie Briscoe Read Free Book Online Page B

thought that maybe if she could get Mandy to talk about it, she wouldn’t be so irritated with him anymore.
    “It’s nothing to nobody else probably, but most everybody who knows me knows that I love music and I especially love concerts. There was a Black Friday concert in Nashville in January that I really wanted to go to, but I didn’t have enough money for tickets, and I tried everything to win them off the radio, but I couldn’t. He got me tickets. I don’t know how, I mean it was a New Year’s Eve Show, but he did it. I got to see Reaper and Harmony sing to one another, and it was the best night of my life.”
    “Did he go with you?” Meredith was trying to think back, but December and January had been especially busy for her.
    “He came with me, and we rode down with Jagger and B. I think Jagger’s how he got them, but he refuses to tell me to this day. He just knew I wanted to go and he made it happen. Nobody had ever done anything like that for me before, and since then I’ve looked at him differently.”
    Meredith could understand why. That was something a teenage boy in lust would do. “Have you two gone out since then?”
    “Yeah.” She bit her lip. “But they’re never official dates. He never asks me, he just assumes I’m going to be there whenever he wants me to be. A few months ago we started kissing and other stuff.” She said it so quickly, Meredith almost missed it.
    “What other things? Do we need to talk to your mom? You are seventeen now.”
    She shook her head. “No, I’m good. I’m not stupid; I don’t want to be a teenage mom like my mom was. When I thought things were headed that way, I told mom and she asked me what I wanted to do. I decided to ask B to take me to the doctor. Mom understood, and then she gave me one of Jessica’s books.”
    Meredith spit her mouthful of ice cream into her bowl. “She gave you one of Jessica’s books?” She heaved breaths. “What the fuck for?”
    “Mom said she wanted me to know what was fake and what not to expect.” She giggled. “I have to say, I’m kinda glad I shouldn’t expect all the stuff that goes on in those books. Some of that was a little intimidating.”
    Holy shit. She was going to have find out which book Denise had given Mandy. She knew it had to be one of the sweeter romances Jessica sometimes wrote, but damn. “But you haven’t had sex with him?”
    Mandy shook her head, biting her lip again. “I don’t want to have to do that to keep him. I want him to be with me no matter what, and I thought he was okay with that until Drew this afternoon. To know that they talked about me and about that—it hurt. Drew’s my brother; he’s supposed to protect me from that kinda stuff. I do for him. Whenever anyone says anything about him, I’m always there, telling them to stop.”
    “It’s different for guys,” Meredith told her gently. “They get so caught up in what their friends think of them. I can guarantee if Dalton had told him the two of you had slept together, Dalton would be sportin’ two black eyes tonight. Guy code is way different than girl code, and way more confusing. Don’t question it, just smile and nod. It doesn’t get easier as you get older.”
    “Great.” Mandy sighed. “I’m still not sure I’m ever doing anything right as it is. I thought maybe once I reached twenty, things got easier.”
    Meredith laughed loudly. “I hate to break it to you, but as you get older, some things get harder. You’re going to be okay though. You have a good head on your shoulders, and regardless of what Drew did to piss you off, he’s always going to look out for you.”
    “It’s not just Drew that pissed me off,” she admitted. “It was Dalton too. I thought I meant more than that. I mean he tells me that all the time when we’re by ourselves. He takes me in his car out to the field off Porter Pike, and we get in the back and talk about how our lives are going to be next year. We had plans, or so I