Kissing Jayden: a romantic teen thriller Read Free

me,” I mumbled. “He’s been all quiet and weird.”
    “Jayden Stone? Quiet and weird? Right! More like hawt !” Stace said with a dramatic eye roll.
    We were standing there hanging out, and I was just starting to relax when I looked over at saw Jayden and Mike Jensen having some sort of argument. And Vicki Westfield was standing right there — smirking. All of a sudden Jayden looked over and pointed angrily in my direction, making my stomach perform a bunch of panicky flip-flops. I held my breath and tried to convince myself that it was just my imagination.
    A few minutes later, I almost jumped out of my skin when someone tapped me on the shoulder. I totally knew who it was just from the looks on Stace and Kelly’s faces. That, and I could smell his mouthwatering aftershave. I turned around slowly and looked up at Jayden, trying not to seem like a nervous wreck.
    “Do you wanna to dance?” he asked.
    I looked around. A slow song had just started playing, and almost nobody was on the dance floor. I swallowed. But I couldn’t think of how to get out of it, or why I even wanted to get out of dancing with the hottest guy in school. Was I crazy? If I said no, that’s exactly what Stace and Kelly were going to ask me: Are you freaking nuts, Molly?
    Nodding, I started following him toward the dance floor thinking oh my God, oh my God, oh my God ! I was going to be dancing — with Jayden freaking Stone — in front of most of the freaking school! This had to be a dream. I tried to breathe normally, but I was sure I was blushing like crazy. Him inviting me to the dance, then whatever happened in Mr. Kaplan’s classroom, and now I was about to dance with him — this was totally not normal reality. Not for me at least.
    “I really like this song,” I said nervously as we walked onto the dance floor.
    “Yeah, me too.”
    I was kind of surprised by that, because for some reason I didn’t think it was possible to have anything in common with Jayden Stone. But when I looked up at him again, he didn’t look happy. I actually couldn’t think of a time when I had seen him looking less happy.
    Okay, this wasn’t totally true. In eighth grade, I heard all this stuff about his mom cheating on his dad and running off. Then, after that, I remembered seeing him a few times looking serious and sad and it made me want to give him a big hug.
    Crazy, right?
    We ran in totally different circles, but everybody knew he was a little wild. Not like Mike Jensen wild, though. Mike Jensen was the type of wild where he would wreck his giant pickup and not care because his dad would just buy him a new one.
    Jayden led me to the middle of the dance floor, and I nervously lifted my arms and put them on Jayden’s shoulders like he had shown me in Mr. Kaplan’s classroom. Then he put his hands on my waist, and I shivered a little bit. But a few seconds later, I was burning up.
    We weren’t really dancing that much, which was a relief, because it meant I couldn’t step on his toes, trip, or do anything else really embarrassing. Finally I looked up at him, and that was when I realized that Jayden was staring down at me like the freaking world was going to blow up or something.
    “Molly, can you just pretend like it’s just you and me?” he whispered, his voice raspy and serious.
    I laughed a little, but my throat was completely dry. When he brought his hand up and brushed my cheek, I stopped laughing. My skin was on fire, which was even more embarrassing because the dress Stace had loaned me scooped kind of low in the back. Totally not my style. At least the other day in Mr. Kaplan’s room, I had been wearing a sweater when we sort of danced.
    Suddenly Jayden pulled me in even closer until my chest was pressed up against him, and I totally stopped breathing. He still looked super serious as I stared up at him, and my lips parted. I wanted to say something, but I couldn’t.
    Ohmygod . Was he going to kiss me? His lips looked so perfect,