Locked by Parker Witter Read Free Book Online

no question he’d win, but there was a moment when it got really close. Kendall Highdell started giving out candy and promising open pool parties at her parents’ summer house. It was hard to top that, especially when she made the offers in a crop top. But Ed wasn’t about to give up. He spent the entire week before the election figuring out how, and then he pooled his savings and bought a Starbucks cart for campus the day before and the day of the election. Kids like candy, but there is nothing like a Frappuccino to really seal the deal.
    I remember the three of us—Ed, Noah, and I—sat on the steps of the quad after he won, hopped up on caffeine and his victory.
    â€œHe loves you,” Noah says, sitting up. “He always wanted you to know it.”
    â€œI did,” I say. I shake my head. “I do.”
    Noah reaches across and takes my hand. “You’ll see him,” he says. “Both of them. I’ll get us off here.”
    He squeezes. I squeeze back.
    I suddenly remember the night Ed and I got together. Not that I haven’t been thinking about it a lot, I have. I’ve been thinking about it practically since it happened. It had been a rocky few months. My mother died, then my dad remarried. Ed was there for me, and Noah, too. I’ve never said this to anyone before. I don’t even admit it to myself anymore. But the night Ed came to me, Noah was with him, and I thought, when I opened the door, that Noah was coming to tell me he wanted to be more than friends.
    It wasn’t until Ed opened his mouth and said we had to talk—that he wanted to tell me something—that I knew where it was headed. Where we all were.
    It was stupid to think otherwise. Noah would never have brought Ed. Noah wouldn’t have made it about the three of us. “I want this to be okay between us all,” Ed had said. Noah had stood there, a stiff smile on his face, gripping the flowers Ed had given him to hold.
    â€œWhat are you thinking about?” Noah asks me now.
    â€œNothing,” I say, but I’m remembering the way my chest deflated right down to my feet. I’m remembering how, even when I was falling in love with Ed, it felt like my heart was breaking because it wasn’t Noah—Noah didn’t love me.
    He leans in close, and for a moment I think about spilling, about telling him everything. But then he says, “Should we go to sleep?”
    â€œSure.”
    We stand up and dust ourselves off. We walk up the sand trail to the house. I rinse my feet off in the basin by the door and hand the ladle to Noah when I’m done. We go inside. It’s so dark here, so quiet. So still. There is absolutely nothing except the sound of our own breathing.
    I’m walking around him to the bedroom when my arm brushes up against his back. Neither one of us moves until I spin, slowly, to face him. I can see just the outline of his features inside—the moonlight isn’t nearly as bright when it’s blocked by canvas.
    Without even thinking, I trace my hand down his arm. The need to be close to him is so strong, so palpable, that I can no longer fight it with my own thoughts. I feel him suck in his breath. “August…” he says. The same way he did in the car after sophomore formal.
    But something is different this time. Ed isn’t at a conference; he’s in another universe, maybe even dead. And the reality of that, of how isolated we are, makes me feel closer to Noah than ever before.
    â€œI need you,” I say. “I just…”
    His arms come down hard around me and then he’s lifting me off my feet. My hands loop around his neck, and I feel my chest on his—heart to heart—separated by so much and so little. He presses his lips to my ear. “I’m here,” he says. “I’m not leaving you. I promise.”
    I inhale him close to me. My hands reach for him, to pull him closer, but I feel his