Heartless (Keeping Secrets) Read Online Free PDF

Xbox, and forget tonight ever happened.
    Kevin hit the keypad on the side of the house to deactivate the security system. I was the only person outside the family who knew the code. I remembered it the same way Kevin did. His father had drilled it into our heads when we’d gone to elementary school. Thirty aught six, the name of his favorite gun, .30-06.
    Our families had always been intertwined, ever since we were little. When we’d been neighbors, it had been all right. When all the shit had gone down with my stepdad, they’d been the only friends my family had left. Kevin’s mom, Tina, was a housewife who had been more than willing to watch me and play daycare while things got “settled.”
    Nothing ever got settled, and I had spent the majority of my childhood at Kevin’s as opposed to at home. Tina had been the one to take me to my first day at elementary school, and she always made sure Kevin packed something extra in his snack bag for me. They’d been the family I had always wanted. It had escalated the older I’d gotten, until I was spending four or five days a week at their house. My stepdad had put a stop to sleepovers during the week, however, once I’d come out. He saved his nighttime visits for those times to free up my weekends, the considerate bastard. It didn’t matter, though. Kevin and his family had become mine somewhere along the way, and it didn’t take a genius to realize how lucky I was.
    We padded through the house that was silent as the grave. His parents were no doubt asleep, so we were quiet as we made our way upstairs and hung a right down the hall to Kevin’s side of the house. Yeah, Kevin had a whole side. He was even wealthier than Cade, but Kev knew how to show it without showing it off.
    Kevin’s room really consisted of three rooms and a bathroom. The room you entered into from the hallway was his game room, which came complete with every teenage boy’s fantasy, a sixty-four-inch flat-screen plasma TV, four hundred cable channels, and every game system known to man. All of the wonders could be witnessed while sitting comfortably on the off-white suede sectional that was the only piece of furniture in the room except for the coffee table and small dorm-sized refrigerator that he kept soft drinks in.
    Everything else in his rooms paled in significance to the wonder of that space, but then I hadn’t really been into Kevin’s room since I was a lot younger. We usually got stuck, by choice, in his game room before pouring ourselves into bed. His room was on the right, the bathroom was in the middle, and the “guest room”—aka my room—was on the left. Kevin lived in freaking paradise.
    He threw his letterman jacket on the back of the sectional and picked up the remote to turn on some music. “Talk,” he commanded. Shit. And here I thought I was going to get away with not saying anything. “What happened? Start from the beginning.”
    I did. Everything from my shoes to Tommy came pouring out of my mouth like word vomit. By the time I finished my tirade, I was pissed all over again. “I can’t believe he fucking kissed me like that. I mean, it was like he owned me and was freaking warning everyone off me. How fucked up is that?” And how incredibly hot was that? I rubbed my hands against my eyes and demanded my brain stop thinking such a thing.
    “I really wish you’d let me tell my mom about Jonathan. You said you’d get it to stop, J. You haven’t.” Kevin sighed. I really did not want to go there with him about Jonathan again . I didn’t want anyone else to know, especially not some grown-up who would throw me a pity party. I caved once and told him what was going on. Being my knight in shining armor, Kevin had wanted to go tell the school counselor or the police or some shit. I, of course, had told him under no uncertain circumstances that he was not to tell anyone. He’d been adamant, and it had taken me threatening to never speak to him again and saying I would