Unspoken (The Lynburn Legacy #1)

What's going on with you? Jared asked out of the blue.

[...]

Beginning a new era of journalistic history, Kami told him, sending her cheer through their connection. Also, to be perfectly honest, Angela and I were slapping our asses.

As one does, said Jared. (ARC 10-11)

"Like being a child, awareness of him the morning chorus that woke her and the lullaby that sent her to sleep, his thoughts always her first and last song."

Forest deep, silent bells
There’s a secret no one tells
Valley quiet, water still
Lynburns watching on the hill
Apples red, corn gold
Almost everyone grows old.

“If I wasn't going to be a world-famous journalist and if I didn't have such respect for truth and justice, I could be an amazing master criminal.”

“Honestly, Jared, one thing at a time. Why are you in the well with me? This is a really bad rescue!”
“You lost consciousness and slipped under the surface of the water!” Jared pointed out. “There was no time.”
“But now we’re both trapped! Now we’re both going to die!”
“No, we’re not,” said Jared. “I called the police as I was running to the well. I’m sure they’re coming.”
“Did they say they were coming?” Kami asked suspiciously. “Or did you shout ‘Kami’s in the well!’ and then jump in the well too, thus losing your phone and making sure that the police think it was some kids playing a dumb joke?”
Jared paused. He was breathing quickly, the dreamy part of Kami noticed, his chest rising and falling hard. She wasn’t sure if it was because he’d had to run so fast, because he’d had to dive to grab her, or if it was panic.
“Alternate plan,” Jared said. “Do you have a very intelligent collie who might communicate through a system of barks to your parents that little Kami is in the well?”
Kami closed her eyes and leaned her cheek against the wet planes of Jared’s collarbone.
“We’re going to die.” Something else dawned on her. “And where is your shirt?”
“Let me explain,” said Jared. “I had just gone to bed, like a reasonable person, when you decided to get tossed into a well like a crazy person. And then it was a matter of some urgency to reach you. You’re lucky I tripped over my jeans on the way out the door.”

“Listen to me. I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know what any of this means. But I know this much. It doesn’t matter. You’re not one of them. You never were. You’re not theirs. You’re mine.”

There was a wall between them, but the wall of silence in Jared’s head wasn’t there anymore. Kami still did not quite dare to come to the place where their minds met, for fear of being shut out again. She skirted the edge of what he was feeling, and stretched out her hand so he could see it on his side of the stone wall.
After a moment, she felt the brush of Jared’s fingers against hers. The light touch of skin on skin made electricity crackle through her blood so that it burned and stung in her veins.
She had never been so aware of anyone in her life, or so uncomfortable.
Jared’s hand closed around hers, their fingers linking. From a careful touch of fingertips,they were suddenly both clinging as if the other had fallen off a cliff and they had to keep hold or risk them slipping away. Jared’s hand was a lot bigger than Kami’s, fingers callused.
It was just a boy’s hand, blood and flesh and bone, she told herself fiercely. It wasn’t such a big deal.

“There are only two important things for us to discuss right now,” Kami said. “The first is that to be a success, our newspaper requires a photographer.”
“What’s the other thing?”
“He’d be excellent decoration for our headquarters,”Kami said. “You have to admit, he’s very good-looking, and I need a photographer, so can I keep him, please, oh, please?”
Angela sighed. In the cupboard, the sigh was like a gust of wind. “Kami, you know I hate guys being around all the time. They won’t stop staring and bothering me and giving me the sad, sad eyes like a puppy dog until I just want to kick them. Like a puppy dog.”
“So you have some puppy issues,” Kami observed.
The cupboard door swung suddenly open.
The new boy stood framed by the bright light of the office.
“Sorry to interrupt,” he said. “But I can hear everything you’re saying.”
“Ah,” said Kami.

Kami did not feel comfortable talking about Jared’s mother, but she knew they didn’t have a good relationship.She also knew it was irrational and illogical and insane to worry about his family troubles. It was insane to care so much in the first place. He was a voice in her head, after all:she tried not to think about it too much because it made her think she really might be crazy.
Jared filled in the silence. She wants me to stop talking to you.
Kami did not let her dread touch him. And will you stop? she asked, trying to show him nothing but support.
I told her I had to think about it, said Jared wearily.
Kami curled tighter under the covers, feeling cold. Jared said nothing else. There was silence in her head and silence beneath her window, and still she could not sleep

How do you deal with it? Kami asked Jared. The laughing at nothing and occasionally stopping dead in your tracks.
I have a system where when I stop, I lean casually against something, Jared told her. It makes people think I'm a bad boy. Or possibly that I have a bad back.

Kami was accustomed to people thinking she was crazy.
"You're crazy," said her best friend, Angela, as the bell rang…
"They said that about all the great visionaries," Kami informed her, hurrying down the hall to match Angela's long-legged stride.
"You know who else they said it about?" Angela demanded. "All the actual crazy people."

"And we're taking a picture of you being all lord of the manor, outside on the hill. Do you own, like, an old-fashioned white shirt? Because you should wear it, and maybe it should be all wet, as if you were swimming in the lake."

"Hark," he said, his tone very dry. "What stone through yonder window breaks?"

"Talking like this is very classical of us," Kami suggested. "Think of Pyramus and Thisbe."

She used to tell him she was Rosaline, not Rosalind, and nobody told Rosaline's story.

Kami also saw why Holly had called the delinquent Ash's brother. They were alike enough to be brothers, but in this case the fairy-tale prince had been cast into shadow and ruin. Jared literally looked like Ash under a shadow: Ash with a tan, darker blond hair, and dark gray eyes with odd, cold lights in them. Crazy eyes, Holly had said.

Here he was, her oldest and closest friend, and she couldn't help wishing him out of existence.

I found something. And it was horrible, and the only way I know how to deal with something horrible is to do something about it.

"Hi," Kami said to Dorothy, the head librarian…"Can you tell me where I could find the books on Satanism?"
Twenty minutes later, she had Dorothy convinced that it was for a school project, and she really did not have to telephone Kami's parents.