Can't Hold Back by Serena Bell Read Free Book Online

something like this: “Poor thing. Father’s dead. Mother’s barely functional.”)
    Because spoken words didn’t trouble Becca as much as written words, she was able to scrape by for a long time. But as she got older, there were papers and more papers. Bad grades and bad behavior—chalked up to
bad attitude.
    When the verdict of dyslexia finally came, she was already in junior high. Then it turned out Becca’s disability was more complicated than they’d thought, and the special-needs teachers were stumped. Their mother was useless, and Alia had to figure out how to find specialists, who piled on the diagnoses. A decoding and comprehension disability. Dysgraphia—not the classic motor difficulties, but something related to the way words “wiggled and crawled” in Becca’s mind—her own words.
    When her mother couldn’t go, Alia went in to meet with teachers and administrators. There were accommodations, but by then it was difficult, almost impossible, to change how Becca saw herself. The pretty one, the dumb one, the one who was good at being popular and dating, but not at anything else.
    Only it turned out that the kind of self-esteem you built on collecting friends and boyfriends was like a house of cards. And the house fell and the rot infected Becca’s romantic life, too.
    Couldn’t you help me write him a few letters?
    If Alia had qualms about it, she buried them so she could see her sister smile again, more often, all the time.
    “She has no confidence in her ability to communicate. She wanted you to like her, and she freaked out about not being able to write the way she wanted to. So…so I helped her.”
    Of course, that explained all of her behavior except the care package and the instant messages, but
God,
if Nate wasn’t going to bring them up, she sure as heck wasn’t going to.
    He opened his eyes, dark blue and, even upside down, curiously intense. That gaze provoked a queasy sensation in her stomach, a mix of lust and guilt.
    “Why don’t you roll onto your stomach. Here, give me a second, I’ll get the face cradle.”
    She slid the face cradle into the end of the table and draped it with a towel. He rolled over with a sigh. She was reminded of a dog settling itself before a fire at night.
    His glute muscles were gorgeously thick and tight. He was fully clothed in jeans and a T-shirt, but even so, there was way too much for her to admire. And when she began to stroke the long muscles in his back, her own body resonated.
    She closed her eyes tight and did a reverse “Think of England.”
I want this job
.
More than I want to slide my body up the length of his and comfort him with my warmth.
    I want this job more than that.
    I do.
    She could take refuge in her own shame over the past, too. “It was a big lie, what Becca and I did. In the beginning, I did my best to just write down what she said, but she kept asking, ‘How could I say that better?’ Or, ‘Do you think that’s what he meant?’ Or, ‘What would help him most?’ ”
    And then, when Nate’s replies came—
I know exactly what you mean;
How did you know?
I feel like you know me so well
—Becca had said,
You see?
What would I do without you?
You know what to say to him.
She’d hugged Alia with gratitude.
    Alia had tried to ignore her own joy at how he’d responded to
her
in the letter.
    But somehow more and more of Alia had slipped into the letters. Thoughts she had about stories he’d told. Advice she wanted to offer him. Comfort in words Becca wouldn’t have chosen but Alia eagerly typed up.
    Toward the end, he’d written Becca a letter where he listed the things he missed most about civilian life. About Seattle.
The misty kind of rain where it’s definitely raining but you can walk around in it without getting wet. Perfect summer days where you can sit in the sun without overheating. The Bon—sorry, Macy’s!—star at Christmastime, and the carousel, too. Cow Chip cookies. Garlic fries and Kettle Korn at