Love Me (52 page)

Authors: Jillian Dodd

Tags: #YA Romance, #General Fiction

I can do whatever I want.

And I’m going to do it.

I’ve even made a list. A miniature script of my vacation.

Where I commune with nature. Eat fish I caught myself. Do yoga on the beach. Swim with the dolphins. Macramé myself a pair of sandals. Make a necklace out of shells. Write my name in the sand. Build a sand village. Drink milk from a coconut. Lie in the hammock and read. Collect fruit from the trees and make my own tropical smoothies.

Make that spiked smoothies.

Wander down the beach.

Find a hot guy.

Shit.
No. No guys.

I remember Vanessa telling me that. How it’s expected.

But I’m not going to do that.

I can’t do that.

I can’t jump from one relationship to the next.

I did that every time Brooklyn hurt me.

Coming to Eastbrooke has been really good for me in so many ways.

I’m stronger. Smarter. Nicer. Tougher. Happier with myself.

I’m doing things that I love.

I know what I want to do with my life.

I’ve finally become the kind of girl my little sisters could look up to.

Except for the lies.

Lying to my friends is killing me.

And the longer I’m there—the closer we get—the more I feel like I’m being eaten from the inside out.

If I go back to Eastbrooke, I’ll end up nothing but a shell.

Last night I went over it from every different angle.

Tried to imagine every different reaction.

How they would react if I told them.

How they would react if someone else told them.

But no matter how I try to spin it in my brain.

The outcome is always the same.

Our trust would be broken.

They’re all amazing. And I know they would understand why I had to lie.

What they won’t understand is why I didn’t trust them enough to tell them my secret.

That’s what will kill their trust.

And Aiden.

I can’t even imagine how Aiden would react.

He’d be crushed.

I’d be crushed.

And it would be ruined.

Vincent is like a massive natural disaster. A hurricane, a tornado, and an earthquake all rolled into one.

And nothing can survive that.

Especially not Eastbrooke.

So I’m not going back.

I pull my wallet out of my bag to grab a tip for the driver. As I do, the glow-in-the dark moon tumbles onto my lap.

“What the hell?” I say, noticing for the first time that there’s writing on it.

I flip it sideways and read.

The
End

adore me

The Keatyn Chronicles: Book 4.5

A Thanksgiving break novella

Coming November 23rd.

Click
here
to pre-order.

**Once again, the ending of this book was probably a bit of a shock.

I’d like to ask that you do not spoil it for others in your reviews.

I want all readers to be as surprised as you were at the end.

Thanks so much for understanding <3

Speaking of reviews . . . If you loved this story, please leave a review wherever you purchased it.

And please don’t upload or share this on the internet. If you want authors to keep writing the stories you love, please respect their work by not sharing or uploading copyrighted material.

And . . . if you need to talk about the ending and the series, or are just suffering from hottie overload, or maybe, in the case of this book, a hottie hangover, please know that there is help.

Join the
Keatyn Chronicles Addicts Group
on Facebook.

And be sure to check out my
website
for added content: clothes, playlists, dream casts, merchandise, and sneak peeks.

Other books by
Jillian Dodd

That Boy Series

Fall in love with the boys next door.