Cold Kiss Read Online Free PDF Page A

But I never told her when I started seriously experimenting with my power on my own. The whole subject was so off-limits, it felt like the one thing I had to hide from everyone. And I was trying things a little more complicated than making a pencil spin on my desk, or making the pale yellow daffodils hot pink.
    Once I made it rain in Robin’s bedroom, right over a pile of her dirty sweatshirts and socks. Another time I folded a piece of white lined paper into the shape of a bird and brought it to life. I was so terrified, I opened the window and let it go, once it had stopped flapping around my room in panic.
    You’d think I would have learned my lesson.
    I can’t tell Aunt Mari about Danny. I can’t tell anyone.
    Standing in the library now, I can see him in my head, setting his jaw, starting down the stairs, and my pulse kicks so hard, a loose book on the edge of the shelf hits the floor. The kids across the aisle look up at me, and I glare until they shrink down into their sweatshirts and hold up their magazines again.
    I’m not going to find anything here. I’m not even sure what I’m looking for anymore, and suddenly it’s so hot, so close, I’m starting to sweat. I stumble past the kids and the ancient reference librarian, who frowns at me from behind his thick black plastic glasses, and out the door into the shockingly cool air.
    Where I walk right into the one person I really don’t want to see.
    “Whoa, sorry,” Gabriel says, catching me with both hands on my upper arms. “I didn’t see you coming.”
    I’m positive he’s lying. “Yeah, well.” I shrug him off and start walking, but I can hear him following me, feet heavy on the sidewalk. I scan the quiet street and run across it, toward home.
    “You don’t like me,” he says as he falls into step beside me, dry leaves and grass crackling underfoot. It’s not a question.
    “I don’t know you.” It’s true, even if what he said is true, too.
    “Gabriel,” he says, and turns around to walk backward, holding out his hand. “Nice to meet you.”
    “God, what is your problem?” I’m trying for casual, dismissive, but my face is already hot, and I know he can see it. “Go find some other girl to bother. Believe me, they’ll all be thrilled to have fresh meat to chew on.”
    “Not interested,” he says, and steps easily over a dead twig, still walking backward, eyes fixed on my face.
    “Not my problem,” I tell him, and try to ignore the way my heart is pounding again. I can control myself, I can, I just have to concentrate. I walk faster, trying to pass him, but he matches me step for step.
    “I can feel it, you know,” he says, and suddenly stops dead, grabbing my arm so I stumble to a halt beside him. “What’s inside you.”
    My blood is racing so hot through my veins, my skin is tight, tingling. He can’t know, no one knows, it’s not something you can see.
    “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I manage, even though my tongue feels too thick in my mouth, huge and clumsy.
    I break into a run before I’m even conscious that my feet are moving, and all I can hear over my thudding footsteps is him calling, “Yes, you do.”
    I run right past my house, through the overgrown yard to Mrs. Petrelli’s garage. I’m sweating, panting, completely out of breath, my backpack banging against one hip, but I don’t care. I scramble up the stairs, and all I can think about is Danny holding me.
    He’s waiting, tense and blinking, standing at the edge of the makeshift bed. “Wren.”
    I don’t—can’t—say anything, I just drop my backpack with a thud on the dusty floor and walk into his arms, burying my head against his chest.
    His arms tighten around me, fingers tangling in my hair. “I heard you coming. I missed you,” he whispers, and sits down, pulling me into his lap.
    He leans his cheek on my head, runs his hands down my spine and then back up, underneath my hoodie, and it’s just like the million other times