Fallen in Love by Lauren Kate Read Free Book Online Page A

over and banged on the ground and hooted. It felt so good to let go of all that pent-up nervous energy, to release it into the Valentine’s Eve air and just laugh.
    “You hate them.” Miles sounded crestfallen. “I know they’re not your normal style, but they were the same color as that bonnet and—”
    “No, Miles, that’s not it.” Shelby sat back up and sobered when she saw his face. Then she started laughing again. “I traded the bonnet to get you this.” She held up the Dodgers cap.
    “No way.” He reached for it with the air of a kid who couldn’t believe that the presents under the Christmas tree were really his.
    Silently, Shelby held the gloves in her hands. Miles gripped the cap in his. After a long moment, they tried their gifts on.
    With the cap tugged tightly over his blue eyes, Mileslooked like his old self again, the boy Shelby recognized from a hundred lectures at Shoreline, the boy she’d first stepped through the Announcers with, the boy who was, she realized, her closest friend.
    And the gloves—the gloves were amazing. The softest leather, the most delicate design. They fit her perfectly, almost like Miles knew the exact shape of her hands. She looked up to thank him, but his expression made her pause.
    “What’s wrong?”
    Miles scratched his forehead. “I dunno. Would you mind, actually, if I took the cap off? I realized today I could see you better without it, and I liked it that way.”
    “See me?”
Shelby didn’t know why, of all times, her voice chose that moment to crack.
    “Yeah. You.” He took her hands. Her pulse picked up. Everything about that moment felt really important.
    There was just one thing that was wrong.
    “Miles?”
    “Yeah?”
    “Do you mind if I take the gloves off? I love them, and I will wear them, I promise, but right now, I—I can’t feel your hands.”
    Ever so gently, Miles tugged off the leather gloves, one finger at a time. When he was finished, he laid them on the ground and took both of her hands in his again. Strong and reassuring and somehow totally surprising,Miles’s grip made her grin from the inside out. In the bough of the laurel tree behind them, a nightingale trilled sweetly. Shelby swallowed. Miles took a slow breath.
    “Do you know what I thought when Roland said he was going to send us home tomorrow?”
    Shelby shook her head.
    “I thought:
Now I get to spend Valentine’s Day in this incredibly romantic place with this girl I really like
.”
    Shelby didn’t know what to say. “You’re not talking about Luce, are you?”
    “No.” He watched her eyes, waiting for something. Shelby felt that dizziness again. “I’m talking about you.”
    In her seventeen years, Shelby had been kissed by a lot of frogs and a few toads. And every time it got to this moment, the boy would always make the ultimate loser gesture, saying, “Can I kiss you now?” She knew some girls thought that was polite, but to Shelby, it was just a huge pain in the butt. She always ended up saying something sarcastic back, and it always just annihilated the mood. She was terrified that Miles was going to ask if he could kiss her. She was terrified he
wasn’t
going to ask if he could kiss her.
    Luckily, Miles didn’t leave her too much time for terror.
    He leaned in very slowly and cupped her cheek in the palm of his hand. His eyes were the color of thestarry sky above them. When he guided her chin closer to his, tilting her face ever so slightly, Shelby closed her eyes.
    Their lips connected in the sweetest kiss.
    Simple, a few soft pecks. Nothing too complicated; they were just starting out, after all. When Shelby opened her eyes and saw the look in his—the smile she knew as well as her own—she knew she’d been given the best Valentine’s Day gift there was. She wouldn’t have traded it for the world.

LOVE LESSONS

T HE V ALENTINE OF R OLAND

ONE

THE LONG AND BLINDING ROAD
    R oland rode hard for the city’s northern gates. Though his route