Never Have I Ever (Campus Games, #1)

by Stephanie Alves

“Excuse me, can we come through?” A light voice comes from my side. My head turns, and I see an angel.

blink twice. I need to make sure I’m seeing right. I see a vision of blue as her eyes look up at me, and then she smiles. A smile so beautiful that I become hypnotized, apparently because I do nothing but stare back at her.

She starts dancing around me, and I’m drinking her in. She looks so happy, so beautiful as she dances like no one is watching.

But whenever I spent time with him, he didn’t feel like a stranger. He felt like freedom and liberation.

“How do you… oh my god. You remember that?” The party. It was the only thing I drank to that night. He turns his head to the side, stopping abruptly and staring right at me. “I remember everything about you, angel.”

I don’t care. I don’t know where we’re going or what we’re doing, but I don’t care as long as I’m here with him. I just want to be here with Grayson, wherever that is.

“Show some respect,” he spits out. “She’s with me.”

Cars on our right, in front, and behind are vast memories by the time we overtake them. It's an indescribable feeling and like nothing I've ever seen or felt before. My heart is in the back of my throat. I smell the trees and feel the air rushing past us. I can hear the white noise of the wind and the sound of the engine roaring as Grayson speeds up. All of my emotions are doubled, tripled even. I’m alive. At this moment, I feel more alive than I ever have before. I feel it deep in my bones, and Grayson gave that to me.

“Don’t live for other people. Live for yourself,”

God she’s so pretty it hurts. Physically hurts me to look at her.

“You got me flowers,” I say more than ask. I’m in disbelief. He walks towards me and hands me the flowers. I take them from him and look down at them, unable to stop staring at them. Grayson got me flowers. “Yeah,” he says, sticking his hands in his pockets and shrugging. “When you told me that you buy yourself flowers because you don’t have anyone else to buy them for you, I felt bad,” he admits, making my breath hitch. “I know I’m not your boyfriend, but… we’re friends, right? And well, you have me now, so I’ll buy you flowers from now on.”

“As long as I get to taste this,” he says, running his thumb over my bottom lip. “I don’t give a fuck what I have to give up.” I stop breathing. I don’t even remember how to breathe in this moment. “I want this more than smokes.”

Are you trying to run from me? Because let me tell you, Rosie, no matter where you go, I will scour the earth to find you.

And when this inevitably ends, I’ll be nothing but an experience to her, but she will always be my angel.

I still as I watch her walk out of the gates, dragging her suitcase along behind her, as she searches around the room for me. I grin. I fucking grin like a madman.

“But… you don’t believe in love,” I somehow manage to say. “I didn’t,” he reaffirms, shaking his head. “Until you.”