Kissing Jayden: a romantic teen thriller Read Online Free PDF

again, I stopped. After a second, I turned to face him. He frowned and blew out his breath, exasperated.
    “Are you ever going to let me explain?”
    I looked down. Then I just pulled free of his grip and bolted, running back to Mark’s car as fast as I could. There wasn’t anything to explain.
     
    *    *    *
     
    With a lot of practice, I got really good at avoiding Jayden and Mike. Tyler and I just went back to being friends, which worked out better for both of us. And in the afternoons, I took the bus home right after school and focused on my schoolwork. Things were simpler this way when I just avoided all guys.
    Then one morning I got to my locker to drop off my books and found a rose and a card stuck in the vents. My first thought was that it was Tyler, wanting to get back together. But that seemed unlikely, because I had seen him staring at Emma Simmons, all schmoopy-eyed — all because she had asked him for a ride once. I opened the card and shivered when I started to read the note.
     
    Roses are red
    Violets are blue
    I liked you
    But you never had a clue
     
    I looked around. The note wasn’t sweet or romantic. It was just creepy. Weird. Who left things like that in people’s lockers? One possibility made me sick to my stomach. A stalker? Like out of the movies? But who would stalk me? And why?
    Later, when I told Stace and Kelly about the note, they were like, “Whatever, it’s probably just Tyler wanting to get back with you.” But he hadn’t been giving me “let’s get back together” looks or anything. Besides, we still talked, and it wasn’t like we had had a bad breakup. We had barely even gone out! Yeah, it had been nice to have someone to meet me at my locker and hold hands with and sit with at lunch, but after kissing Jayden, I was ready to wait for fireworks.
    Hello! Frustrating! Why did Jayden have to kiss me — on a bet — right before Tyler asked me out? Then I remembered what Tyler said: the only reason he had asked me out was because Jayden had kissed me. Talk about weirdness! Like that somehow made me approachable ? Yeah, definitely weird.
    Sometimes I wished I was like Emma Simmons or Vicki Westfield who went to parties up in the hills and had wrapped guys around their pinkies. Emma and Vicki were what guys like Jayden — and apparently every other guy — wanted. I guess. But that wasn’t me.
    Either way, I still couldn’t figure out, why Jayden had pulled me into the movie theater and kissed me until I couldn’t think straight. Unless it had been a total accident … like he had thought I was Vicki or something. But he had said my name, though! And the way he had said it … Mmm . Just thinking about it made me shiver.
    That wasn’t the real world, though. And it wasn’t like Jayden Stone liked me. I mean, after the baseball game, he had said, “ Molly, you’re a nice girl .” Which meant he thought I was a nice, pathetic little good girl who had never kissed anyone before him. But how did he even know that? For all he knew, I could be hooking up with every guy around!
    Okay, that wasn’t even close to reality. But it wasn’t like I had gone around telling people that I had never kissed a guy before Jayden. Well, Stace and Kelly knew, but they were my friends. Now everybody in school knew that I had kissed Jayden — and it was all a big freaking joke to them.
    During lunch, Stace pointed over at Jayden’s spot on the quad near the outdoor stage. She wasn’t doing it in a mean way. It was more in an “Oh my God, look who’s hanging out with Jayden and Mike!” kind of way. And I totally did a double take. It was Tyler, sitting off to the side looking kind of pathetic and mad as he watched Emma Simmons hanging all over Mike Jensen.
    Secretly I was kind of relieved — for Tyler. Because maybe it meant he would stop hanging out over there. Mike was crazy, and while I couldn’t imagine Emma Simmons picking Tyler over Mike — not in a million years — I