Key To My Heart: Stay Read Online Free PDF Page A

Black families and
she and Alisa Black had started a quiet campaign to get the two of
them together. Acasia had been tempted to mention it to Garett,
sure that he had to be aware of their mothers’ conspiring, but she
hadn’t.
    She felt like a complete coward, afraid
to talk to Garett of all people. She had seen him both at his worst
and at his best, just as he had seen her since they had grown up
together. It seemed more than a little silly for her to be afraid
to talk to Garett Black. But she was all the same.

 
    Garett
    Garett was well aware that his mother
and Acasia’s mother had decided that he and Acasia were meant to be
the next joining of the Black and the Brown families. He was just
glad that that information had somehow escaped his father. Jed had
been disappointed when Gavin had broken up with Acasia, convinced
that she was the only one that could settle his rebellious son
down, and had seemed to give up on the idea of their families being
joined any more than Jay and Nikki had already joined
them.
    His mother was driving him crazy,
asking him when he was going to take Acasia out on a date. He put
her off again and again, trying his best to think about something
other than her beautiful face. But it wasn’t working. He was
distracted all the time, and knew that he was falling in love.
Sometimes when he looked at Acasia he was sure that she felt the
same, that she remembered their shared kisses just as vividly as he
did, but then she would say or do something that left him feeling
even more unsure of her feelings than he had been
before.
    He felt like an idiot all around, and
wondered what it was going to take to get his head on straight
again. He had a feeling that the only way to get her out of his
head would be to ask her out. The worst she could do was say no,
though the thought of such a refusal was almost too much for him to
bear. So he put it off again, throwing himself into his work,
taking on both extra work for his father and working all hours of
the night around his house.
    He told himself that he needed to feel
what it felt like for her not to be in his life, preparing himself
for a disappointment he hoped he never had to really feel, and took
to eating his meals at another restaurant or at home. It made him
feel like even more of a chicken shit to avoid her, but he needed
some distance, needed to feel as if some sort of logic was in play.
Because if he would have followed his heart completely, he would
have asked her out the day she came back to town, and he knew that
that definitely would have sent her running in the other
direction.

 
    Acasia
    She tried not to let the fact that
Garett hadn’t come in to the diner in weeks bother her, but it did.
It bothered her greatly. And it bothered her even more that their
mothers had seemed to have given up on playing match maker. She was
afraid that it meant that Garett had told his mother that he wasn’t
interested in her.
    So Acasia tried to put it all out of
her head. She tried to think about what she wanted to do with the
rest of her life, but all she knew that she really wanted at the
moment was Garett. The realization that he didn’t seem to feel the
same only seemed to make her want him more.
    She was tempted more and more to run
away and never look back as Gavin had. But she knew that she
couldn’t walk away without a word to anyone. Her mother would never
forgive her if she did, and she was unsure that her sisters would
either. So she knew that running away wasn’t an option, not a real
one anyway, though the thought that she could was enough to comfort
her at times.
    She tried to convince her heart to give
up on Garett, but not seeing him hurt, and even more so because she
knew that he was purposefully avoiding her. She let it slip to Demi
one night when they were on the phone that she had fallen for
Garett. Her little sister told her to go for it, and ask Garett out
herself, sure that he would say yes. But Acasia wasn’t so sure, and
she