Make You See Stars by Jocelyn Han Read Free Book Online

on her shoulder. Her next retort died on
her lips. She wanted to tell him that she hadn’t, that her friends
had told her without her asking, but she couldn’t – or rather, she
didn’t want to break this silence. She wanted to know what would
happen next.
    Alen’s eyes were dark-blue
under the projected, Croatian night sky when he observed her,
running his hand lightly up and down her arm. And then, his hand traced her
neck and cupped her cheek. She stared into his eyes, her heart
slamming against her ribs.
    “ So soft,” he
murmured.
    All of a
sudden ,
panic rose in her chest. What the hell was she doing here in the
dark, alone with him? Tori bit her lip and tried to back
away.
    Alen must have picked up on her
sudden mood change, because he narrowed his eyes. “You’re afraid of
me, aren’t you?” he said flatly, his gaze reflecting a mixture of
triumph and loneliness.
    “ No,” she whispered. She wasn’t
– it had nothing to do with him. “Besides, what do you care? You don’t even
like me.”
    “ Really?” He laughed, his hand
still resting on the soft skin above her collarbone. “This feels
like I don’t like you?”
    She clenched her fists in
frustration. “Oh, shut up. You think I’m a rich, spoilt brat, and
you hate my kind of people – whatever that means, anyway. You’re just using
me.”
    She stared him down, her
cheeks flaming, her eyes ablaze.
    The next thing he did was
the last thing she expected: he got up and took a few steps away
from the bench.
    “ Enjoy the last ten minutes of
the view,” he said calmly. “I get it – you don’t want to be seen with me. I’ll
let myself out.”
    And with that, he turned
around and walked downhill.
    “ You’re an idiot ,” she shouted after him.
    Actually, she felt like an
idiot herself. For liking a guy who despised her background. For
freaking out when all he did was touch her face. For wanting him
and pushing him away at the same time.
    Tori closed her eyes and tried
to block the memories of that night at the convention center. She
found she couldn’t. Her first time with Dieter was etched in her
memory, and it would taint everything that came after.
    When the night sky changed
and turned into a sunlit, Floridian sky with a blood-red sunset,
she slid off the bench and started down the hill to walk off her
stress in the forest. She wouldn’t let Anna’s gift go to
waste.
     

7.
     
    When Tori got to Airlock
Seven the next morning, Jari was already waiting there.
    “ Don’t you feel like we’re
just going on a field trip?” she said, holding up her lunchbox.
She’d really brought one. “Except for the cryo-suits, of
course.”
    Jari laughed. “Best field trip
yet,” he said. “The furthest I ever got as a Helsinki Uni student
was the moon. And it’s kind of a bummer when you realize the
surface is literally covered in footsteps made by former astronauts. Nothing
ever gets erased there.”
    Tori smiled. “Wasn’t it
weird to see all those old United States flags up
there?”
    “ Well, the biggest one
fluttering in the non-breeze now is the Great German flag,” Jari
replied, sounding a bit sullen.
    Tori nodded curtly. She knew
Finland and Germany hadn’t exactly been on friendly terms before
the wars. Nor had Croatia and Germany, for that matter. Having
lived on Mars for most of her life, she often forgot about the
tension in former Europe, now called Great Germany. On Mars, there
was just Germany – at least on the northern hemisphere. The south
was occupied by the Brits. As for the other super powers, the
Russians and Japanese were on Jupiter’s largest moons, and Mexico,
America and Canada had formed the Desidan Alliance so they could
work together in mining smaller moons in the solar system. All
other nationalities were pretty much scattered on space stations,
still on Earth or eradicated.
    When they heard footsteps in
the hallway, they both turned around. Tori’s mouth fell open
wh en she saw
it was the man who’d