Wildfire (Maple Hills, #2)

by Hannah Grace

For younger me, who wanted to be his first choice.

“To love is to burn, to be on fire.” —Marianne Dashwood, Sense and Sensibility (1995)

He laughs into my hair, still not letting go. “I’m just the stop gap. I’m the guy you fuck right before you meet the love of your life.”

The only person who knows you’re not confident is you.

The compliment floods my system, melting me, and the vulnerability from ten seconds ago dissipates into nothing as the validation seeps into my system like a drug. It’s not that I’ve never been told I’m hot before, I have, but this guy seems tortured by it. Like he’ll never recover from it. Like I’m the tipping point of his sanity, and that is a feeling I could get addicted to.

I know she’s here, because the universe loves nothing more than to drag me to hell and back for fun.

“Sweet. I love a summer romance,” he says cheerfully.

She accepts reluctantly, looking at my offering like I’m a cat that just dropped a dead mouse at her feet.

Turning my back to him, I quietly open the door, careful not to wake my sleeping roommate. When I look over my shoulder, he’s still standing next to the steps. “What’re you doing?” “I’m watching you go in so you don’t have to watch me leave.”

“The only person who knows you’re not confident is you”

“I think I’m having my main character moment.”

Women will look past every red flag for a man over six two.

“I have a habit of leaving a path of destruction in my wake, both literally and metaphorically.” “Like a wildfire.”

“Not butterflies, the butterfly effect. If I change one thing in my past, it’d cause a ripple effect, and I wouldn’t chance not meeting you.”

“I didn’t know Fish could text.”