Under the Orange Moon Read Online Free PDF Page B

side.
    “Who knows?” Ben answered innocently. “ Brandon’s driving her home.”
    “I think it’s time to follow. I’m drunk,” Jonah slurred. “I wish we would have caught a ride with them.”
    “Lightweight,” Ben teased.
    “I had more shots than you. Shut up.”
    Ben wanted to leave, as well, but he couldn’t let Jonah know his motives. “I’m crashing at your house tonight.”
    “No shit.”
    The two paid their enormous bar tab and hopped into the first cab they could find. As they rode back to the Mathews’ house, Ben quietly hoped that Jonah didn’t take too long to pass out.
    Dylan flipped around angrily in her bed, frustrated not only at herself for allowing Ben to get to her again, but for the mere thought that he didn’t remember something she thought about on a regular basis.
    Why do you keep letting him do this to you? she thought, as she pulled the pillow over her head.
    She had gone on just fine without him around and now his beautiful face was not just in her mind and memory, it was real and saying things that her imagination had not allowed before.
    This was his game and she would always be the fool that let him win her over. Even five years later, he still managed to aggravate her, hurting her more than anything. She had always wondered what a run-in with Ben would do to her and now she knew. He was the same Ben that he always has been with no glint of hope for a change.
    Dylan pictured him talking to the redhead with her cleavage flopping out of her shirt in front of his eyes. She thought of herself on the other side of the spectrum, ordinary and the weed that she had always been known as. Ben had always wanted the perfect girls, the fake bimbos that knew more about lip-gloss than they did about art, culture and the environment. 
    She promised herself that the next day would be different. She would ignore him for the next three weeks and hopefully she would be stronger when she saw him again in another five years. 
    From the moment he understood that he was attracted to Dylan, Ben wanted nothing more than to touch her skin and smell her hair. She acted nothing like the girls he dated. She was so much more beautiful, interesting even, and she didn’t even have to try.
    He didn’t care that she wore loose-fitting clothes and could run faster than every kid in their neighborhood growing up. There was something about Dylan that no one else held. She was just as beautiful in her baggy jeans as she was in the tiny boy shorts she slept in when she thought no one would see—anyone but Ben, of course. It remained an unanswered mystery. For whatever reason, she didn’t seem to mind when he saw her body.
    Cursed with the knowledge of how perfectly built she was, he would let his imagination run untamed with thoughts about her. He was almost certain that he fantasized about her since he realized the pleasure and, at the same time, the guilt that came along with it.
    To put it simply, his penchant for Dylan was hard to resist, even more so at night.
    He loved to sneak into her bed. There was something soothing about being next to her. He would wrap his arms around Dylan and align his body along hers, molding himself against her. There was something about the nighttime that made him bold, never caring if she was awake or not while he slept beside her, holding her.
    Of all the times he did this, there was only one time that he knew Dylan was aware. It was the night before he left for school. His mother had been crying, her final attempt to guilt him into staying with her in Phoenix. He left to quiet her sobs and, more than anything, to be near the only person who made him feel alive.
    On that night, five years before, he crept into the Mathews’ home. There was so much movement there that he knew no one would ever tell the difference between him and one of the loud Mathews boys. It was safe to come and go in that house, not that anyone would care if they did catch Ben walking around at three in