Breaking Nova by Jessica Sorensen Read Free Book Online Page A

first,” he says and then steps back toward the couch, making room for me to step up.
    I weave around him and position myself in front of the board. I count backward before I inhale and hold my breath as I throw the dart. It hits the bull’s-eye. I force myself to breathe through the memory of the last time Landon and I played darts and he let me win, even though he denied it.
    “Wow, I think I might have just thrown away twenty bucks.” Tristan rubs his scruffy jawline and steps up to the dartboard, taking his time targeting the dart. When he shoots it, he starts cursing as the dart bows to the side. It ends up hitting the outer edge of the board and he turns to me, shaking his head.
    “Okay, I think I might have had one too many drinks to be playing darts for money,” he says, sitting down on the arm of the chair. He looks me over as the light above my head flickers. “Where’d you learn how to play like that? Or was it beginner’s luck?”
    Without looking at the dartboard, I toss the dart and it almost hits another bull’s-eye. “I learned from the best.”
    “Who?” He slants his head as the corners of his lips quirk. “Was it Dell down at the bar?” he jokes, because Dell’s the town drunk and thinks he’s the champion of everything. “Because he’s always bragging about being a super dart champion.”
    I swallow hard as vivid memories puncture my brain. “This guy I used to date taught me, actually.” I take another long sip, telling my head to shut up.
Don’t go there. Please don’t go there. Not right now.
    I hear his breath catch as he probably remembers what happened. Everyone in this town heard about it within hours after it happened, and it’s been kind of hard for everyone to forget. It wasn’t too long after Tristan’s sister died, but hers was by accident, a simple wrong place at the wrong time.
    After a gap of silence drags by, Tristan blows out a breath and stands up from the armrest. “You want a shot or something?”
    “Yes, please,” I say way too quickly and wind the neck of the nearly finished Corona around in my hand, channeling my tension on it.
    He walks over to the kitchen area and digs around in the cupboards, hunting for shot glasses. I sit down on the sofa, tip my head back and suck down the last of the Corona, regretting my decision to come back here. Not to Dylan’s house, but back home. I’d been okay at college—not great, but okay, or at least focused on something besides my obsessive compulsions and Landon’s death.
    A giggle floats from the hallway and I gratefully exhale, thinking it’s Delilah. I start to get up but when the curtain is drawn back, I sink back down when a leggy blonde steps out, adjusting her top back over her bulging curves.
    She takes one look at me and then plasters on a plastic smile. “Hey… it’s Nova, right?”
    I have no idea who she is, but she looks about my age. “Yeah…”
    “Like the car.” The sound of his voice is familiar, way too familiar, like the world has decided to play a cruel joke on me. When a guy steps out of the hallway, I just about drop dead on the floor as the similarity intensifies and sends my mind spinning. Everything about him screams Landon, and for a second I really believe it’s him.
    It’s not really the similarities in features as much as something less visible. He’s taller than Landon, with dark brown hair inside of black, and it’s shaven short instead of hanging in his eyes. He also has slightly more muscle tone to him, and there’s an indistinct scar over his top lip. All these things don’t match up, but it’s the little details that push an insanity button in my head. Like the charcoal on his hands, or the fact that the laces of his boots are untied, something Landon used to do all the time. The sound of his voice, deep and smooth like melted butter, has a strikingly comparable ring to it. And his eyes. Those goddamn honey-brown eyes with so much sorrow in them it nearly swallows