FROM THE AWARD-WINNING AUTHORS OF THE CHEATER.FAKER.TROUBLEMAKER SERIES (WATTY'S 2016, FICTION AWARDS 2016, HACHETTE AUDIO 2017), JENNY ROSEN & KRISTEN MAGLONZO.
After bullies, braces, and brutal heartbreak shatters his faith in love, soon-to-be fre...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
NOTE: Do NOT miss out on this emotionally powerful reading of Chapter 53 by kaelking12!
CHAPTER 53
Lacey
My dad is silent on the car ride over to Elias's house.
This has become our new normal lately, playing the game of keep away every time he knows I'm going to spend time with a boy he's convinced has changed me for the worse.
A boy he believes is stealing me away from the church and throwing my salvation into question. But seeing Elias is not a sin. Neither is trying to save him from himself. Neither is trying to be there for someone who has no one else in his corner.
This is the argument that's raging in the silence. After one too many Sundays of missed sermons and loud disagreements at the dinner table, we stopped talking about "it".
The elephant in the room.
The disobedient daughter dating the forsaken son stopped being a topic of conversation and disappeared into radio silence.
And now we fill that tumultuous space with changing frequencies. Non-conversations. Emptiness. The sound of static church songs fills Dad's car while the air inside it runs on empty.
I lower my window and breathe in the rush of sea salt and sun-kissed sand that always comes to greet me during the last mile and a half stretch to Elias's house.
The ocean's wild today. White caps kiss the surface as the wind whips across the waves. The air's more tense. Maybe it's the uncharacteristic overcast hanging over our always sunny coastline. Maybe it's the fear of not knowing how I'll find Elias after two weeks of not seeing him.
Maybe it's the weight of my dad's disapproval.
Or maybe it's me.
But regardless of where it's coming from, I can't let Elias see that anything's bothering me today.
I'm getting better at hiding things lately. I've hidden six months worth of sneak out dates, late night movies, and intimate moments with Elias where we've nearly crossed the line.
Waiting is getting harder. Saying "no" doesn't have the strength that it used to. I want things with Elias that I never thought I'd want. But my dad doesn't know.
If he did, he wouldn't be driving me within ten miles of his place. But Dad thinks we mostly hang out at school and occasionally at each other's houses. He thinks we're mostly supervised. But Eli and I are getting better at finding loopholes.
