At first, I thought it was a mistake. A previous owner’s habit, maybe. But as I kept reading, the pattern became obvious. The underlined words were too deliberate to be random. They were carefully chosen, deliberately highlighted, leading somewhere as if they held some kind of secret meaning.

It was a message, I realized. His way of forcing me to read.

My heart quickened as I flipped back to the beginning. I had to go back, piece them together, whisper them under my breath like solving a puzzle. I scanned each line, searching for the first underlined word. It didn’t take long.

are

A slow smile spread across my face. I kept going.

you

The markings were subtle, so faint I almost thought I was imagining them. But they were there, forming a sentence, one word at a time.

paying

My fingers traced the faint line, my breath hitching in anticipation.

attention

That was the first message. Are you paying attention?

I laughed softly, shaking my head.

Of course, that would be the first message. It was so him. I stared at the words, my heart doing something stupid in my chest. It was like unwrapping a present, layer by layer, word by word.

I smiled to myself as I continued to read the pages, my fingers brushing the margins where each word was highlighted.

you love to read

I rolled my eyes at that one. A lie, obviously, because I didn’t love to read. But it was the way Blake pulled me in.

I grinned when I realized what he had done.

Sure, I could’ve cheated. I could’ve skimmed through and collected all the marked words, piecing together whatever message he had hidden inside, focusing on the underlined words without actually reading. But I couldn’t. I wasn’t a cheater.

I wasn’t going to skip ahead and ruin the game.

So I kept reading, searching for more.

you

I grinned like a fool.

make

My heart fluttered as I turned each page, my mind racing to decipher the hidden message he had left for me. Each time I found a marked word, I hesitated, wondering if I was getting closer to uncovering the sentence that had been carefully constructed just for me.

terrible

life

choices

I snorted. “Wow. Rude.” But I kept reading.

like

ignoring

my

recommendations

I laughed. It was the kind of gesture he made that made me both want to roll my eyes and smile at the same time.

But I wasn’t done.

There was more.

So much more.

I read every page, every chapter, letting the story unfold naturally, waiting for the underlined words to guide me toward whatever he wanted to say. It took me nearly a week to get to it. Seven full days of dragging my eyes across pages that sometimes bored me, sometimes frustrated me, sometimes made me question what exactly I was supposed to be getting out of this.