Scintillate Read Online Free PDF Page A

colors that blanketed him. He looked…warm.
    “I know who you are.” A barb of pain stung my finger when I carelessly pricked it on the needle of a cactus. “Damn,” I whispered.
    Finn stood beside me. “All right there?” He pulled my hand toward him to look. The crackle of energy between us flustered me, so I stared down at our hands together instead of looking at his face. Vapors of golden-orange danced from his skin. He wore a double strand of beads on his wrist and behind them, a leather bracelet with silver studs. The beads were gleaming and faceted, surprisingly delicate. A gift maybe? From a girl back home?
    “Yes,” Finn said.
    “Yes, what?”
    “You asked if these were a gift from a girl.”
    I slipped my hand from his grasp. “I did? No I didn’t.”
    Perhaps I should’ve gone to the nurse. There was seriously something wrong with me. First, I fist his shirt like a deranged mental patient, and now I couldn’t trust my mouth not to blurt out fluttering thoughts.
    “My mother gave them to me. Before I came to the States.”
    “Oh? It’s sweet that you wear them.”
    He smiled but crinkled his brows together. “Why wouldn’t I?”
    “They’re very feminine,” I answered, more bluntly than I meant. Coy and flirtatious were obviously not in my repertoire.
    “In actual fact, she made me promise to not take them off.” He fingered them lightly, causing the beads to sparkle in the diffused sunlight of the greenhouse. “So, are you saying you think I’m feminine?” he asked with a tilted smile. He leaned toward me a fraction closer. Intermittent hints of red hairs mixed with the dark whiskers on his jaw below his curved lips. I wondered what his bottom lip would feel like under the pad of my thumb.
    I stepped backward, stuffing my rising hand into my pocket. Oh, hell no. There was nothing feminine about him. He was all male. It radiated off of him like fumes. But not in the testosterone-soaked way of most of the guys at school. He wore his masculinity like a light scent that made me want to get a bigger whiff.
    Finn looked around the greenhouse. The sun-drenched room illuminated the flecks of honey in his eyes. “I’ve walked past this place a hundred times, but I’ve never been in here before.”
    I followed his gaze upward to the ceiling. The translucent panes of glass were of varying ages and colors. Some crystal clear, others a faint yellow and deep amber. It felt like being inside a prism, a weathered crystal hanging in the sun, casting slanted shafts of golden light on the emerald plants inside and heating Finn’s distinctive colors.
    “This place is a miracle. I don’t blame you for hiding in here.”
    My gaze snapped to meet his. I looked into his eyes, which alternated between shy and knowing. “I’m not—I—I am hiding.” I looked away, shocked at my admission. I plucked the spent stems off a geranium. “It’s just that I can breathe in here.” I sighed deeply, feeling decidedly short of breath since Finn had come in. How did he manage to suck all of the oxygen out of a place full of plants?
    He cocked his head toward the window. “You can’t breathe out there?”
    I looked again at the wall of kids preening and posing outside, the overwhelming clouds of color rising and falling around them. “No.”
    “You’re different from them.”
    Story of my life. I’d always been different, never fit in, but he had no idea how different I felt lately. “That’s probably not a compliment, but I’ll take it as one.”
    Finn tickled my nose with the tip of a fern. “I meant it as one.”
    I swatted it away. “Why are you in here? Really. Did one of them dare you to do this?”
    He grinned, amused. “A skeptic, huh? If I was dared, it’d be something along the lines of ‘I dare you to approach the beautiful girl with the large Do Not Disturb sign on her chest.’”
    I stared at him. The light swirls of faint red and pale yellow radiated from him in tranquil drifts. Maybe