Private Paradise by Jami Alden Read Free Book Online

his dad. Though Sam didn't elaborate, now their run down
house in the worst neighborhood in their school district made
sense. “He sounds like my mom. She pretty much collapsed when my
dad took off. Your dad is probably depressed too―”
    “ He's a worthless asshole,” Sam had
snapped, every muscle tensing against her. “And he's not worth
talking about.” With that he'd pressed her back against the
blanket, covered her mouth with his, and slid his hand up the front
of her tank top. Carla had laid back and eagerly wrapped her arms
around him, letting any questions about his father or anything else
drift away on the night breeze.
    Sam told her other things though. Like how
his struggles in school started after his mom died. “I didn't
really care, and there was no one around to tell me why I should
care.”
    Carla understood how that could happen.
Though there were definitely smart kids in her high school - her
cousin Chris had been at the top of his class when he'd graduated
with Sam three years before Carla―the public schools in their
neighborhood were among the worst in the state. Schools were
crowded, the teachers overworked and unmotivated to chase down a
kid who wasn't interested, regardless of the cause.
    Instead they focused on kids like Chris,
whose wealthy father wasn't about to let him fail, and Carla. Smart
and self motivated, she was a rundown high school teacher's dream
student. Academic achievement wasn't her only goal. Unlike Chris's
dad, her father was not a multimillionaire who would be able to
send Carla wherever she wanted to go to college. She knew the only
way she was going anywhere in life was on the power of her own
intelligence and hard work.
    She could see how Sam, without anyone to push
him would fall through the cracks and learn to rely on his looks
and charm to get by. But that summer it seemed he realized he
needed to buckle down and get to work if he wanted any real future.
“I don't want to end up some forty-year-old loser, drifting around,
trying to pick up women half my age like….” He trailed off, but
Carla knew he was talking about his dad. “That's why after this
summer, I'm enlisting in the army.”
    The decision had shocked Carla. “Really? The
army?” she asked, the disbelief evident in her voice.
    She felt the muscles of his chest tense
against the hand she rested on him. “What? You don't think I can do
it?”
    “ It's just,” she'd started, her hand
making small, soothing circles on his chest as she tried to form a
tactful way to make her point, “isn't the army all about rules?
You're not exactly the most by the book guy I know.”
    He let out a soft chuckle and she felt him
relax. “I can't really argue with that.”
    “ Especially not after they found it was
you who took Mr. Ramsey's car joyriding and stuffed it full of
packing peanuts.”
    Sam let out another soft laugh and ran his
hand up and down Carla's spine as she snuggled even closer. “That
wasn't even the half of it. And the only reason I got caught was
because Natalie Cushman ratted me out after I told her I wasn't
going to take her to prom.”
    At the time, Carla had felt a little pinch in
her chest as she remembered the details of that story. Even as a
freshman and a nerdy one at that, Carla would have had to be dead
not to hear about what went down between those two. Natalie
Cushman, who had been hooking up with Sam on and off all spring,
had been so heartbroken when Sam had declared, in front of all five
hundred students who had first period lunch, that he wasn't her
boyfriend and he didn't do “stupid ass shit” like prom, that she'd
immediately gone to Mr. Ramsey, the shop teacher, and told him that
Sam was the one who had stolen his car back in February.
    The reason she knew? Natalie had been with
him.
    “ I always thought it was unfair that
Natalie got off free and clear and you got suspended and had to do
four weeks of summer school.”
    Sam's strong pecs rippled against her cheek
as he