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Back Cross My Heart Save as PDF
Chapters (54)
  1. Cover
  2. Prologue
  3. Chapter One
  4. Chapter Two
  5. Chapter Three
  6. Chapter Four
  7. Chapter Five
  8. Chapter Six
  9. Chapter Seven
  10. Chapter Eight
  11. Chapter Nine
  12. Chapter Ten
  13. Chapter Eleven
  14. Chapter Twelve
  15. Chapter Thirteen
  16. Chapter Fourteen
  17. Chapter Fifteen
  18. Chapter Sixteen
  19. Chapter Seventeen
  20. Chapter Eighteen
  21. Chapter Nineteen
  22. Chapter Twenty
  23. Chapter Twenty-One
  24. Chapter Twenty-Two
  25. Chapter Twenty-Three
  26. Chapter Twenty-Four
  27. Chapter Twenty-Five
  28. Chapter Twenty-Six
  29. Chapter Twenty-Seven
  30. Chapter Twenty-Eight
  31. Chapter Twenty-Nine
  32. Chapter Thirty
  33. Chapter Thirty-One
  34. Chapter Thirty-Two
  35. Chapter Thirty-Three
  36. Chapter Thirty-Four
  37. Chapter Thirty-Five
  38. Chapter Thirty-Six
  39. Chapter Thirty-Seven
  40. Chapter Thirty-Eight
  41. Chapter Thirty-Nine
  42. Chapter Forty
  43. Chapter Forty-One
  44. Chapter Forty-Two
  45. Chapter Forty-Three
  46. Chapter Forty-Four
  47. Chapter Forty-Five
  48. Chapter Forty-Six
  49. Chapter Forty-Seven
  50. Epilogue
  51. Author’s Note
  52. Acknowledgements
  53. Keep Reading …
  54. About the Publisher

Five minutes later, Colt and I are staring down one solitary full-size bed. We are, after all, staying in the AMU Hotel attached to the Memorial Union. It’s school-owned and operated. I don’t know what I expected, to be honest. A California king? A hide-a-bed couch, at the least?

‘Thoughts?’ Colt finally says after a long, awkward moment.

We exchange a look of pained confusion. Colt looks remarkably put-together in his hoodie and training shorts for just having suffered a nine-hour drive with thirty-six raucous girls in an abnormally toasty bus, and I hate myself for noticing. I hate that I register the way his lashes flutter in thought, and the dimple appears in his cheek again, this time as he tweaks his mouth to the left. ‘I can sleep on the floor.’

My line of sight immediately travels to the kinesiology tape slapped all around his bad knee. ‘You’re not sleeping on the floor.’

Colt’s eyes widen, lips parting just slightly. ‘No, I can—’

‘I’ve slept on the floor before in way too many shitty hotels, and I know you have, too.’ I chew on the inside of my cheek and regard the bed with disdain. The elephant in the room. ‘We’ll figure something out.’

‘Yeah.’ He idly cracks a knuckle before reaching out and grabbing one of the forty different pillows on the bed, tossing it in the centre. ‘Make a wall?’

It’s our best bet. Maybe it will stop my heart from thundering like a herd of horses at the mere thought of sleeping in the same bed as Colt Bradley. It means nothing, I remind myself. Except that high school May would probably have passed out at the thought.

We busy ourselves in filling the tentative silence with the whispery whoosh sound of pillows hitting sheets as we form our wall. By the end of it, there’s an obvious division slicing through the middle of the mattress.

‘I think I’m gonna hop in the shower.’ I yawn. I feel like crap, and I figure the shower will help me fall asleep instead of staying up all night in a state of hyper-awareness. ‘Unless you wanna go?’

‘Oh – no, you go ahead, I’ll go after,’ Colt replies quickly, sheepishly.

With a curt nod, I unzip my duffel and grab my PJs, and I try not to notice the hint of pink that creeps up Colt’s neck as I pass him to get to the bathroom.

I try really, really hard.

Chapter Sixteen

Fighting Chance

Colt