My Only by Sophia Duane Read Free Book Online Page A

toes hanging over, chest pushed out. Like I wasn’t holding on and I would be fal ing forward at any time. It felt like something big—life changing big—was happening.
    I heard a laugh then felt a poke in my abdomen. With a hard swal ow fol owed by a deep breath, I blinked and looked down. I literal y was standing on the edge of the stairs, and Olivia was right below me.
    “Can I come up?” she asked. The way her voice sounded gave me chil s. It was teasing, accentuating the fact that she’d already entered back into the house, but now I was standing in her way. Her fingers were pressed against my stomach, and for a moment I didn’t think I would be able to breathe ever again. Her gaze caught mine.
    My breath shook as I inhaled, but I needed to answer, or move, or both. I swal owed hard and scratched behind my ear again before taking two steps back, and whispering, “Yeah.”
    I fol owed her into my bedroom, trying not to acknowledge how perfect her body was, how shiny her hair was, or how good she smel ed. When she got to my bed, she tossed the book and notebook onto it before plopping down herself.
    “Tuition included the books, so I kept my history book from last year. They encouraged us to highlight and write in it, so I thought you might want to look at it.”
    “Yeah.” That intel igent reply came as I just stood there in the doorway, eyes focused on her fingers as she drummed them against her folded legs. I let my eyes fol ow the fingers of one hand up beyond the knuckles, over the veined top of her hand to her slender wrist, up her forearm to the beautiful y pale skin of the inside of her elbow. Her bicep was partial y covered by her T-shirt, and I couldn’t see her shoulder, but I imagined that it was just as pretty as the rest of her. Her neck was perfect, long and elegant, with her golden brown and honey hair spil ing over it.
    Her chin had a smal dimple in it, but had I not been studying her, I might have missed it. I intentional y skipped looking at her lips. I already knew how perfect they were. Instead I focused on her nose. It was the one part of her face that wasn’t so perfect. It was a little too wide, and the end was a little too rounded, but somehow that imperfection helped make her seem even more perfect overal .
    When I got to her eyes, it was like a punch in the gut. They were rounded and her brows were raised. She was waiting for me to do something other than stare at her. I felt caught, like when I was younger and Aaron convinced me that it was a good idea to get into my dad’s “secret” stash of Belgian chocolates. He’d kept it on the top shelf and Aaron nominated me to be the one to climb up and get it. I’d been sitting on top of the refrigerator when my dad found me, and had been frozen when he’d asked, “Just what do you think you’re doing, Adam?” When I’d looked around for help, Aaron was nowhere to be seen.
    But instead of my dad’s patient, yet expectant face gaping at me, waiting for an answer, it was Olivia’s face, her expression mostly neutral but sort of amused, I saw. Clearing my throat, I pushed myself to pretend as though I hadn’t just being staring at her for God knows how long, went over to the bed, and picked up the text.
    Sitting down next to Olivia on my bed, I flipped open the book. It didn’t take long to figure out what some of the problem was. “You’ve highlighted almost every word in here.” I turned to look at her. Her expression was blank. “The point of highlighting is to take a large amount of text and boil it down to the most essential parts. When you study, your eyes should be drawn to the yel ow marks, and you should read only the main themes and important supporting information. What you have here is,” I paused, struggling for a word that wasn’t offensive. “It’s not helpful.”
    “I highlighted what I read.”
    I nodded. “It’s good that you read it, but then you need to pick out the important parts. That’s what