Fallen in Love Read Free

three of them. Teams stuck together.
    “We
didn’t
give up on her,” Miles said softly. “You heard what Daniel said. He is the only one who can find her.”
    “You think he’s found her yet?”
    “I hope so. He said he would. But—”
    “But what?” Shelby asked.
    Miles paused. “Luce was pretty mad when she lefteveryone in the backyard. I hope that whenever Daniel finds her, she forgives him.”
    Shelby stared at mud-slicked Miles, knowing how much he had—at one point—truly cared about Luce. Admittedly, Shelby hadn’t ever felt
that
way about anyone. In fact, she was legendary for choosing the absolute worst guys to date.
Phil?
Come on! If she hadn’t fallen for him, the Outcasts wouldn’t have tracked Luce down and she wouldn’t have had to jump through the Announcer, and Miles and Shelby wouldn’t be stuck here right now. Covered in mud.
    But that wasn’t the point. The point was: Shelby was amazed that Miles wasn’t more bitter about seeing Luce in mega-love with someone else. But he wasn’t. That was Miles.
    “She’ll forgive him,” Shelby finally said. “If someone loved me enough to dive through multiple millennia just to find me, I’d get over myself.”
    “Oh, that’s all it would take?” Miles elbowed her.
    On impulse, she swatted his stomach with the back of her hand. It was the way she and her mom teased each other, like best friends or something. But Shelby was usually a lot more reserved with people outside her nuclear family. Weird.
    “Hey.” Miles interrupted her thoughts. “Right now you and I need to focus on getting to town, finding an angel who can help us, and making our way home.”
    And getting that hat in the meantime
, Shelby addedinside her head as she and Miles broke into a jog, following the cart toward the city.

    The tavern stood about a mile outside the city walls, the lone establishment in a large field. It was a small wooden structure with a swinging sign of weathered wood, and big barrels of ale lined up against its walls.
    Shelby and Miles had jogged past hundreds of trees stripped of their leaves by the cold, and melting patches of muddy snow on the pocked, winding road to the city. There really wasn’t all that much to see. In fact, they had even lost sight of the cart after Shelby got a stitch in her side and had to slow down, but now, serendipitously, they spotted it parked outside the tavern.
    “That’s our guy,” Shelby said under her breath. “He probably stopped in for a drink. Sucker. We’ll just snatch the hat back and be on our way.”
    Miles nodded, but as they slipped around the back of the cart, Shelby spotted the man in the fur vest inside the doorway, and her heart sank. She couldn’t hear what he was saying, but he held Miles’s hat in his hands and was showing it off to the innkeeper as proudly as if it were a rare gem.
    “Oh,” Miles said, disappointed. Then he straightened his shoulders. “You know what, I’ll get another one. You can buy them everywhere in California.”
    “Mmmm, right.” Shelby swatted the canvas tarp ofthe man’s wagon in frustration. The force of her blow sent a corner billowing up. For just a second, she caught a glimpse of a heap of boxes inside.
    “Hmm.” She snaked her head under the tarp.
    Underneath, it was cold and a little fetid, crammed with odds and ends. There were wooden cages filled with sleeping speckled hens, heavy sacks of feed, a burlap bag of mismatched iron tools, and loads of wooden boxes. She tried the lid of one of the boxes, but it wouldn’t budge.
    “What are you doing?” Miles asked.
    Shelby gave a crooked smile. “Having an idea.” Reaching for something that looked like a small crowbar in the sack of tools, she pried open the lid of the closest box. “That’s a bingo.”
    “Shelby?”
    “If we’re going into town, these clothes might make the wrong statement.” She flicked the pocket of her green hoodie for effect. “Don’t you think?”
    Back under the tarp she