Silver Heart Read Online Free PDF Page B

his face reflected everything I was currently feeling. Countless thoughts swirled through my mind, and my body felt like I’d been plunged into an ocean of electrifying emotions.
    They say people go through various stages of grief when they lose a loved one. Seeing Sawyer made me experience something similar, only in reverse. Surprise was the first to hit me, then elation, but there were also feelings of guilt, anger, and pain over the way we’d parted and the years we’d lost.
    I didn’t have long to revel in the past. Present Sawyer was already making his way to us. My chest tightened, my mouth went completely dry, and the previously freezing room was suddenly scorching hot. Seconds seemed to drag on for hours as he glided through the crowd. Everything around me disappeared. The music quieted, the lights dimmed, my heart stopped beating. Then the whole world crashed on top of me as he came to a stop mere inches away.
    “ You ,” I breathed.
    “ You ,” he replied.
    This one simple word conveyed a million different memories and emotions.
    It was the you in “I don’t care if my parents don’t like you!” I had so often cried into his shoulder.
    It was the you in “Take me with you!” I had screamed when he’d told me he was leaving Denver.
    It was the you in “You’re going places and I can’t drag you down,” he had replied with.
    And it was the you in “You’ll always be my favorite medal, Silver .” His very last words to me.
    “Carter the Carver!” My brother’s voice broke through my trance. “How’s life on the edge?”
    “Kinda cold, but not too shabby.” Sawyer leaned over to shake Adam’s hand, giving him a playful pat on the shoulder. All the while, he kept his eyes glued to mine.
    His proximity was making me dizzy. My skin blazed and my heart pounded against my ribcage. My mind was spinning, but now my body was also doing something unexpected. Heat spread through me like wildfire, touching long forgotten places, waking desires that had been dormant for what seemed like forever.
    Without a doubt, Sawyer had always been the cutest boy I’d ever laid eyes on. But something had changed over the past six years. His youthful grin had transformed into a confident, seductive smirk. His jaw was wider, his dark lashes sultrier. I hadn’t remembered his shoulders being this broad and those chiseled ridges beneath his tight black t-shirt had definitely not been there before. He was taller too—he had at least nine inches on my five-foot-five frame. New tattoos wound around his biceps, sliding down the length of his toned arms.
    Sawyer Carter was definitely no longer a cute boy. He was a man. And an incredibly sexy one at that. The kind of man I apparently had no immunity to.
    Once again, Adam’s voice pulled me back to reality. “I had been trying to keep up with news about your progress.” My brother readjusted his collar and swallowed hard. “I’m sorry about everything, Sawyer. My parents…they…” He trailed off and inhaled sharply. “The bottom line is that I was a coward and a shitty friend.”
    Sawyer finally released me from his gaze and looked over at my brother. “Don’t worry about it, man. The past is best left in the past, right?” His green eyes slipped back to my face and my heart squeezed in my chest.
    Is that how he felt about our past?
    “You’re right.” Adam nodded as the tension in his shoulders dissolved slightly.
    “Are you here for training or a vacation?” Maddie asked. “Pain or pleasure?” Her impish grin and narrowed eyes were aimed directly at me. I could almost visualize the plot she was spinning in this very moment. And, for once, I didn’t actually mind it her scheming.
     “I have the week off, but I’m still in workout mode,” Sawyer replied. “I decided to come up here for a change of scenery from my training course in Colorado. I’m trying to nail a particularly difficult trick that doesn’t even have a name yet. So far, I’ve only