What Lies Beneath (Count on Me Series #7) Read Free Page A

especially with the way you used to look at me when I’d hover over your shoulder trying to read. God, I hate that look.”
    “It’s your own fault. A girl’s diary is supposed to be private.”
    “Well, I know that now . But at the time, I just wanted your attention to be on me.”
    “Nice to know some things never change, huh?”
    Pinching her in her side, I pull her back when she swats at me and tries to get away, practically crushing her to my chest before leaning my head down into her hair, inhaling deeply before pressing my lips to the top.
    “My obsession with wanting your attention is entirely your fault. I’m powerless against it.”
    “You’re crazy.”
    “Yeah, I am. But only about you.”
    We’re getting off topic, but where I expect it to feel out of sorts, it doesn’t. It’s nice. Being here with her, the way we’ve been for years, its right. I don’t know what I was thinking, believing that in order for us to move forward to what will one day soon be her taking my name and marrying me, I needed to let her see the past.
    Maybe she’s right and I am crazy.
    “What you wrote, what you thought and said…it was wrong, Kay.”
    “How so?”
    Lifting her head from its resting place over my heart and meeting my eyes, she brings her hand up and over my face, cupping my cheek before shifting her body, lifting it until her face is level with mine. Our foreheads brushing against one another with her lips so close, I can feel the warmth from her breath across my face as she speaks.
    “You were my best friend. My one and only friend. You didn’t need to write in a journal in order to get it because you already had it. You had me.”
    “If I’d written to you that day and asked you if I was your best friend, what would you have written back?”
    “The truth. As much of it as I understood at the time anyway.”
    “Which is what exactly?”
    “That I loved you, even then. Maybe not the way I love you now, because it was different when we were kids, but I definitely loved you. Even when I looked through you, cried because of you, or had no reaction at all. I was happier whenever you were there. Inside. Where it counts.”
    Lowering her hand down until it brushes over where my heart beats a little faster below, she gets her words across loud and clear. She may not have been able to show it in an external way when we were little, but there’s no denying that she felt it.
    The same way I did.
    Inside.
    Where the rest of the world and its shit can’t touch it.
    “Why did you want me to read this so badly, Kay?” she asks after a few seconds of silence pass. “Why now?”
    “Our story didn’t begin senior year. It began a lot earlier than that. And even though there was a whole lot of years where I didn’t exactly show it, before I walk down the aisle and before we start the next chapter of our lives, I needed to fill in the missing parts. I need to show you that even when I acted like you didn’t exist, you did. Inside.” I repeat her words back, meaning every one. “Where it counts.”
    “Then I guess now is probably not the best time to say I don’t want to read it.”
    There it is.
    I knew it was only a matter of time before she said it. Admitted to not wanting to go back. It was stupid of me to assume she could. After everything she’s already had to endure, the last damn thing she should ever have to do is go back. Even if the memories in that book aren’t hers at all, but mine.
    “I’m sorry, Belle. It was stupid. I just thought that—”
    Pressing her lips to mine, she affectively cuts off my words and my train of thought completely until all I can feel is the taste and scent of her as it covers and pulls me in.
    Just her.
    Always Belle.
    “I was just going to tell you to shut up, but since we’ve both done that before, I figured I’d try something new.”
    “Why did you want to shut me up?”
    “Because when I said I didn’t want to read it, I didn’t mean that it was wrong