Everneath by Brodi Ashton Read Free Book Online

nothing between Jack and Lacey now.
    “Becks?” A different voice called from the hallway.
    I looked up to find Jules standing in the doorway. She pointed to her hat, the red one I had knitted.
    “I love it. Thanks.”
    I smiled and raised my fingers in a little wave. Jules hadn’t joined me for lunch again, but she stopped by my nook nearly every day. A couple of days ago, I put the hat in a sack and gave it to her.
    Jules glanced from me to Jack. “Hey, Jack,” she said.
    “What’s up, Jules.” I could hear a grin in his voice as he spoke her name, and where moments ago the air was empty, now the space around us seemed charged with something sweet. Affection, maybe. I couldn’t tell if it was coming from Jack or Jules. Or both.
    Something tore at my heart a little, at the thought of Jack and Jules together. Maybe I was imagining it. Tasting the air was still so new to me, I didn’t know which emotions belonged to the people around me and which ones were mine.
    Jules turned and left. I could’ve sworn her cheeks were a little flushed.
    Jack shifted toward me. “So, Jules gets a smile, huh?” I could feel his eyes on me, waiting for a response. He hadn’t tried to talk to me since that first day, and his voice directed at me again did strange things to me. Made my stomach flutter. Of course, Jack had always had that power over me.
    I kept my eyes down, but I couldn’t stop my lips from turning upward.
    “I see that,” he said. Jack always saw everything.
LAST YEAR
    Christmas Dance. Three months before the Feed.
    Jack took me to the Christmas Dance.
    It snowed the day of the dance, making the Meier Farmhouse and Dance Hall look like something out of a painting, the lights on the roof glowing under sheets of white. And when Jack led me onto the dance floor and grasped one of my hands and tugged it up behind his neck, then placed his arm around my back, soft and low, I thought life couldn’t get better.
    He pulled me close against him, our hands clasped next to his chest. The cedar from the farmhouse mingled with Jack’s aftershave, making a sweet, rustic scent.
    “Becks, remember the first time we met?” he asked, his lips grazing my ear.
    Of course I remembered. The events of that day were permanently etched into my brain. “You mean, the time you nearly beheaded me with a baseball?”
    “I had to do something to get the new girl’s attention.”
    “A simple ‘hello’ would have worked.”
    He pulled me in tighter, as if that were possible. “Why did we wait so long to do this?”
    “Um, because you were making your way through the entire cheerleading squad?”
    He looked at me for a few moments, then shook his head and leaned in to brush his lips along my shoulder.
    I closed my eyes. If this was what I could expect for the rest of my high school years, I never wanted to graduate.
    Ever.
    Later that night, I was alone in the girls’ bathroom. I’d just shut my stall when the bathroom doors opened. Several voices were in the middle of a conversation, and it sounded like one of the girls was fighting back sobs.
    “You’re seriously, like, a hundred times prettier than she is,” one girl’s voice sounded loudly.
    “Yeah. I mean, if her dress didn’t have those straps, she’d have nothing to hold it up.”
    My cheeks went red as I glanced down at the thin straps on my shoulders. But what were the chances they were talking about me?
    “Ignore them both! You’re at the Christmas Dance with Jake Wilson,” another girl gushed.
    I froze. I’d seen who was on Jake’s arm as he entered the hall. Lacey Greene.
    “Shut up, Eliza,” a new voice said. Lacey. It sounded like she was talking through tears. “That doesn’t help. I was supposed to be here with Jack.”
    Crap. They were talking about me and my pathetic straps.
    “But you guys broke up months ago…” another girl said before her voice faded away.
    “It was just a break, Claire, and he knew it.” She sighed loudly. “I gave him