All Chapters of To the two boys I like: Burn me the safe way: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

87 Chapters

Her Safe Choice

Liam texted at six-fifteen.‘Still on for tonight? no pressure if you want to reschedule’Elena read it twice. Put the phone down. Picked it up again.‘I'm on. What time?’‘Seven? I can pick you up’‘I'll meet you there. Send me the address.’She didn't examine why she wanted her own way of getting there. Her own way of leaving, maybe. The option of it.Getting ready took longer than it should have. Not because she was overthinking—she told herself that firmly while pulling three different tops out of her wardrobe—but because she hadn't been on anything resembling a date since before England fell apart, before grief had eaten the version of herself that knew how to do normal things like go places with people who liked her. She settled on dark jeans, a soft cream top, her leather jacket. Hair down. A little mascara. She looked at herself in the mirror and thought: fine. This is fine. You look like a person.Claire was in the kitchen when Elena came downstairs. Her mother looked up and

The Other Side

Elena couldn't sleep.She'd tried. Genuinely tried—lights off, phone face down, eyes closed, the whole performance. Lay there for an hour listening to the house breathe around her.The fridge hum, a car passing outside. Nothing worked. Her brain was running on some frequency she couldn't switch off, replaying the evening in pieces—Liam's hand closing around hers, warm and steady, the boardwalk, the water, the comfortable quiet of someone who wanted nothing complicated from her.It was a good evening. She kept arriving at that conclusion and then immediately leaving it again.Around one she gave up. Sat up. Listened at her mother's door on the way past—the slow even breathing of someone properly asleep, deeply asleep, the kind of sleep that only came from genuine exhaustion. Claire had been doing that lately. Working late, coming home quiet. Grief took different shapes in different bodies. In Claire it looked like tiredness that never fully lifted.Elena didn't wake her.She grabbed he

Rooftop

Her eyes fluttered close.The space between them was barely anything. His breath warm against her mouth, his hand still fisted against the wall, the whole world reduced to this specific alley, this specific dark, this specific unbearable proximity.Then he closed it.His lips found hers and it wasn't gentle—not cruel either, just urgent, immediate, like something that had been held back too long and finally stopped being held. Elena made a sound she'd be embarrassed about later and kissed him back just as hard. Her hands found his jacket lapels without her permission. He tilted his head and deepened it and she forgot, genuinely forgot, every sensible thought she'd had in the past two weeks—the notebook, the decision, the boardwalk, Liam's warm hand in hers—all of it just gone, replaced entirely by this, by him, by the taste of smoke and something underneath it that she was increasingly convinced was just Noah and the particular catastrophic effect he had on her nervous system.It las

Spill

"Oh my God," JoJo shrieked.Not quietly, not discreetly. Loud enough that two tables nearby turned to look, and Elena immediately grabbed her arm."JoJo—""He kissed you—""I know, keep your voice—""On the mouth—""That's generally where kissing happens, yes—"Dusty slammed both palms flat on the table. "Start. Over. From the beginning. Leave nothing out. I want geography, I want weather conditions, I want the exact words, I want—""Dusty—""Elena." His eyes were enormous. "A boy climbed a fence for you at one in the morning and took you to a roof. This is not a drill. This is a full debrief situation."Elena looked down at her lunch tray. Her face was doing something warm and traitorous that she had very little control over. She'd told them because she'd needed to tell someone and her two available options were her mother—absolutely not—or these two, who had known her for approximately two weeks and already felt like the kind of people you told things to. She'd expected interest. Sh

He Popped The Question

The school day ended and Elena was tired in the specific way that had nothing to do with sleep.She'd sat through afternoon classes with her brain split cleanly in two, one half taking notes, answering questions, existing in the functional way a person in a classroom was required to.The other half stuck somewhere on a rooftop at two in the morning, replaying the quality of Noah's voice when he'd talked about his dad, the weight of his jacket around her shoulders, the way he'd looked at her when she caught him looking and neither of them did anything sensible about it.Later, he'd said.She still didn't know what that meant. She suspected he didn't entirely either.Liam found her at her locker after last bell. Easy, unhurried, like always."You walking home?" he asked."Yeah." She shut the locker. They went outside into the kind of afternoon that Pacific Vista kept insisting on—warm, golden, the light doing that thing where it made everything look slightly more significant than it pr

The Wrong Choice...Or Not

Elena coughed, her eyes watering, which was mortifying and also gave her about three seconds to not answer the question while her brain scrambled around like a dropped phone. Liam's face went through several expressions in rapid succession. Concern first, then something that looked like dawning horror."Oh God," he said. "I'm sorry. That was—I shouldn't have just—""No, it's not—" She was still coughing slightly. "It's not that, I just—""You don't have to answer now," he said quickly. "Actually, you don't have to answer at all, I was being presumptuous, we've only been—""Liam."He stopped mid-sentence.Elena looked at him. At the panic that had settled into his expression, the way he'd immediately started backtracking the moment her response wasn't immediate enthusiasm. It made her chest do something complicated."Can I think about it?" she said. "Not because—just because I want to give you a proper answer. Not a panicked one."His shoulders dropped slightly. Relief, maybe. "Yeah.

Thoughts Of Her

The backstage area smelled like sweat and concrete and something chemical underneath it all. Familiar. Noah had been coming to places like this long enough that the smell had stopped bothering him, which probably said something he didn't want to examine too closely.He sat on the bench in the corner, wrapping his hands. Left first, then right. The motion was automatic, muscle memory at this point, fingers finding the rhythm without his brain needing to participate. Which was good because his brain was somewhere else entirely.The roof.Her face when she'd seen the view, that unguarded oh that had come out of her before she could make it smaller. The weight of her in his jacket. The way she'd looked at him when he'd talked about his dad, like she wasn't waiting for the conversation to end, like she actually wanted to be inside it with him. He couldn't remember the last time someone had looked at him like that.He yanked the wrap too tight. Loosened it. Started again.The kiss. He kept

Into the Fire

Elena followed the directions on her phone through streets that got progressively darker and more industrial. Past closed shops with metal grates pulled down, past empty lots scattered with broken glass, past the kind of buildings that looked like they'd been abandoned on purpose and left that way.The warehouse wasn't hard to find once she got close. The bass was audible from two blocks away, a low thrum that seemed to come up through the pavement. Cars parked at odd angles along the street. People moving in small groups toward a building that looked like every other building except for the stream of bodies going in and out of a side door.Outside was chaos in the specific way that crowds got when they were somewhere they technically weren't supposed to be. Smoke drifting from cigarettes and other things. Groups of people passing bottles. A teenage couple pressed against a chain link fence in what was either an argument or foreplay, possibly both. The smell of beer and exhaust and s

Claimed

Elena and the man both turned.Noah stood there like he'd formed out of pure fury. Still shirtless, sweat and blood marking his skin, hands clenched at his sides. The cut above his eye was still bleeding slightly, trickling down toward his cheekbone, but his expression was what made Elena's breath catch. She'd seen him angry before. This was something else entirely.Elena didn't think. She just moved, pushing past the man who'd cornered her and crossing the space to Noah in three quick steps. She reached him and stopped, suddenly uncertain, her hand halfway raised before she let it drop.The man laughed. Actually laughed, like the whole situation was amusing rather than what it obviously was."Easy there, tough guy," he said, straightening his jacket. "Just having a friendly conversation."Noah's jaw tightened. "Didn't look friendly.""Maybe you should ask your friend here what she was looking for, coming to a place like this." The man's smile was all teeth. "She your girlfriend?"Ele

Midnight and Coffee

Noah grabbed his shirt from where he'd dropped it, pulled it on in one fluid motion.His hand found hers and he led her through the thinning crowd toward the exit. People moved out of their way, some nodding at him, others just staring. Elena kept her head down, focused on his back, the way his shoulders moved under the thin fabric.Outside the air was cooler, cleaner. The smell of the warehouse clung to them both but out here she could breathe properly again. Noah stopped in front of a motorcycle parked under a streetlight.Without him needing to say anything, Elena started shaking her head."I can't get on that.""Why not?""Because it's a motorcycle. Because I've never been on one. Because it looks terrifying."Noah almost smiled. The expression tugged at the corner of his mouth before he caught it. "You want to walk home instead? Through these streets? At this time of night?"Elena looked around. The area looked different now that she wasn't focused on finding the warehouse. Darke

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