She did it fast, she did it well, and she did it on time. As inclined as Luke had been to screw off back then just to be obstinate, hell would freeze over before he let her work harder than he did.
In the beginning, he’d hated her because of everything she had that he didn’t—rich parents, pristine home, good grades, and confidence that oozed from every pore. So for the first several weeks, sarcasm and taunting had been the order of the day. Neither of them yielded an inch of ground to the other, using every encounter as a reason to get under each other’s skin.
Then, slowly, things changed.
They still teased each other, but their sharp-edged talk softened into the kind of banter two friends might toss back and forth. Pretty soon Shannon was looking him right in the eye when she spoke to him, and it wasn’t long before they were searching for any reason they could to stay at the shelter a little longer in the evenings. Sometimes they sat in the grass down by the barn and just talked, and every second that passed seemed singular and special.
For the first time in his life, Luke let his guard down, telling Shannon things he’d never told anyone else. And before long he realized she wasn’t the privileged rich girl he automatically hated. She was a real person who maybe even had a few problems of her own. In a life that had been filled with nothing but pain and heartache, just being able to sit and talk to Shannon was maybe the best thing that had ever happened to him.
Soon Luke could barely put one foot in front of the other because he couldn’t stop thinking about her. He wanted her so badly he quivered with the thought of it. But surprisingly, not all of those thoughts were X-rated. When he thought about the reputation he had in high school, it always made him laugh. According to legend, he could have a girl’s bra off in four-point-two seconds, followed by her panties in under ten. And yet every night when he went to sleep, what filled his mind was how Shannon’s skin would feel beneath his palm and the gentle way she would smile at him as if she cared.
He’d been with a lot of girls he’d never thought twice about coming onto, but he just couldn’t bring himself to do it with Shannon. A girl like her with a guy like him? In what universe did that happen? Every time he imagined the elation he’d feel if he kissed her, it was canceled out by the pain he’d feel if she rejected him. And it stopped him cold every time.
Then one evening they’d been sitting cross-legged next to each other in the grass after everyone else had gone home, watching the sunset and talking about nothing. Out of nowhere, Shannon reached out and put her hand over his.
Luke literally stopped breathing for several seconds, his head dizzy with disbelief. Then slowly he turned his hand over and grasped hers. Such a small, small thing, but to Luke, at that moment, it felt huge. He began to stroke her hand with his thumb, back and forth, back and forth. It was as if a spell had been cast and they were both afraid of breaking it.
Finally he turned to face her, staring into those beautiful blue eyes. He lifted his free hand, placed it against her cheek, and kissed her. She leaned into him, circling her arms around his neck, and in that moment he was sure the Rapture had happened and he’d gone straight to heaven.
In the days that followed, they exchanged longing glances when other people were around and stole kisses when they weren’t. By silent consent, they kept their relationship a secret. Being secretive was second nature to Luke, so at first he hadn’t thought anything about it. But as time went on, he began to look ahead to the day when the whole world would know Shannon was his.
But that wasn’t how things had turned out. And to this day, in the dark of night, sometimes he felt the pain of it all over again.
No matter what happened between him and Shannon in the coming months, one thing was clear. She was never going to know how much she’d hurt him. That had been the first time—and the last—that he’d let down his guard and allowed a woman to take even the tiniest bit