The Lonesome Young Read Online Free PDF Page B

school to visit me in juvie.
    “Everybody’s going to be talking about it,” he continued, his smile fading. “If it was Caleb, the student council will need to arrange some kind of memorial service here at the school. He only graduated a few months ago.”
    Derek was on the student council. Also the yearbook staff, the school paper, and the wrestling team. He was a demon in his weight class.
    “It was Caleb,” I confirmed gruffly. Pa hadn’t made it home till the middle of the night, but I’d still been awake long enough to get the details. When he’d headed for the bourbon, I’d headed for bed, not in the mood for another drunken round of “where did I go wrong.”
    The few hours of sleep I had managed to get had been restless. Over and over, I’d dreamed that Victoria had driven that old truck directly into the fire, instead of away from it. Every time I woke up, heart racing, my room seemed to echo to the sound of her screams.
    The two cups of coffee I’d poured down my throat probably would be just enough to get me through to lunchtime.
    “Whoa. Whoa . Who is that?” Derek’s whistle cut through my glum mood, and I looked up to see a battered pickup truck with a WHITFIELD HORSES logo on the door pull into a parking space in the middle row, only a few spaces down from my bike. I shrugged and acted like I wasn’t looking.
    “Melinda Whitfield, probably. She’s been going to school here since the beginning of the year. I’d have expected you to have noticed that, Mr. School Paper.”
    Derek rolled his eyes. “Melinda doesn’t drive. She always catches a ride with somebody. Honestly, as spacey as she acts, she probably doesn’t know how to drive. No, my friend, this is somebody else, and she’s hot .”
    He wasn’t kidding. Victoria was gorgeous, yeah, but there was something else there that had caught at my imagination. A sense of sadness in her eyes. I hadn’t been able to get the way she’d stood up to me out of my mind, either. She’d intrigued me, and I hadn’t felt that sensation in a really long time.
    Derek and I, and half the students in the damn high school, stopped and stared at her as she climbed out of the truck. Her silky blond hair swept down past her shoulders in a loose wave, and when she glanced my way I could see that her eyes were a startling green, which I hadn’t been able to tell the night before in the fire-bright dark.
    Her legs were a mile and a half long, and her curves under her hot little green dress were making me itch to walk over and throw my jacket over her, so none of the other guys currently checking her out could see the hint of cleavage on display. She looked elegant and untouchable, and I had the same feeling of hopelessness that I’d had driving by her on the road even before I’d known who she was.
    A Whitfield. One of them . Horse folk. The family was the richest around. They employed a lot of people in town, and they were the people the whole damned county was named after. I might as well go after a real princess for all the chance I’d have at Victoria Whitfield.
    She glanced around again, and when her gaze tangled with mine, she stumbled and then caught herself. Her cheeks blazed hot pink, and I grinned, unable to help myself. I didn’t know many girls over the age of twelve who still blushed, especially on my side of the county.
    Before I could stop myself, I was crossing the parking lot and heading straight for her.
    She planted her feet, raised her chin, and stood her ground, unafraid of me, unlike every other person in the entire school except for Derek. That wouldn’t last. By lunchtime, the gossips would have filled her in on the Rhodale myth—fact and fiction all jumbled together and presented as truth—and Victoria would stay far, far away from me.
    My stomach twisted in a hard, angry knot at the realization. “Why are you here?”
    She met my eyes coolly. “I’m registering for school. Why are you here?”
    “I’m wondering that