The Secret 04 The Ever After of Ella and Micha Read Online Free PDF Page B

first page, and even reading it again puts goose bumps on my arms. It’s as far as I’ve read and it seems like far enough, yet it doesn’t. I’ve always wanted to get to know my mom better, the mom who didn’t lie, didn’t have panic attacks, the one who smiled, laughed, told jokes. Did she lie in these pages? Should I care so much? What’s done is done. She’s gone, and reading her journal isn’t going to bring her back. Yet I do care.
    “Ella.” The sound of Micha’s voice startles the living daylights out of me and I jump, slamming the journal shut.
    He’s standing in the doorway, completely naked just like he warned me he would be. Lean muscles carve his stomach and cursive letters tattoo the side of his rib cage in black ink, the first lyrics he ever wrote, which he swears he wrote for me:
I’ll always be with you, inside and out. Through hard times and helpless ones, through love, through doubt.
    Setting the notebook down on my lap, I cover my mouth. “Oh my God. You’re naked.”
    “Don’t ‘oh my God you’re naked’ me.” He enters the room and his muscles ripple with his movements, causing heat to pool inside my stomach.
    “What if Lila and Ethan saw you?” I ask, lowering my hand to my lap.
    “Then they saw me,” he replies, his eyes fastened on me as he shuts the door. “I told you I’d come in here naked and get you if you weren’t in there in five.” He rotates his wrist, pretending to check a watch that he’s not wearing. “And it’s been five.”
    I cross my legs because just seeing him like that makes me want to lie down on the bed and spread my legs open so he can slip inside me. “Well, I was coming.”
    “Oh, you will be in a few minutes.” A grin flashes across his face but then it vanishes when he notices the box next to me and the journal on my lap. “What is that?”
    I bite my lip guiltily. I haven’t told him yet, because I know he’ll worry about what it’ll do to me. Still, I’m not going to lie to him now that he’s asked. “It came in the mail yesterday. It’s a box full of stuff… my mom’s stuff.”
    His eyes widen and his lips part in shock. “What? Who’s it from?”
    I tap the top of the box with my finger. “Well, it says from a Gary Flemmerton, but the note inside is… well, it’s from my grandmother… my mom’s mom.”
    “Okay. Didn’t your mom say she was mean?” he asks cautiously.
    “Yeah, sort of.” I smooth my hand over the journal with my chin tipped down. “But sometimes my mom lied about stuff.”
    He shifts his weight and sits down on the bed beside me. Then he hooks a finger under my chin and elevates it so I’m looking at him. “Do you want to talk about it?” he asks, looking at me with concern and making me feel at home, at peace, okay with everything, even the bad stuff.
    “I can’t just yet,” I tell him and when he starts to frown, I add, “Not because I don’t want to, but because I haven’t even looked through all the stuff yet to know what I want to talk about.”
    “Do you want to go through it now? With me?” he asks with understanding.
    “Not right now.” I suck in a slow breath at the idea of reading my mom’s thoughts, concerned what they’ll reveal, what they won’t reveal.
Who was she? Was she like me once?
“But I will… I just need to process stuff one step at a time.”
    He nods, but still seems uneasy as he moves his finger away from my chin and puts his hand on his lap. “So who’s this Gary guy? And why did he send it to you all of a sudden out of the blue? And why did he send it for your grandmother?”
    “I have no idea, but here’s the note.” I pick up the scrawled piece of paper from out of the box and hand it to him so he can read it for himself. After he skims over the note he looks even more perplexed as he sets it aside on the nightstand. “So she was just cleaning out the attic and thought, Hey, maybe I should send the granddaughter who I’ve never talked to a box