Read Junk Miles for Free Online Page A

since then, I haven’t been able to get Saxon out of my head.
    On my birthday he left a book on my windowsill. It was Sense and Sensibility , and before I had a chance to read it and make my own judgments about it, I read his inscription to me. Which basically said that I was Marianne and he was Willoughby, that our love was true, but ultimately wouldn’t work. That Austen was smart for sticking me with Colonel Brandon (Jake? Not really a great fit.), and that I should be smart enough to stick with my fated role.
    He had fallen off of the radar just before my birthday. For a while, he didn’t even show up at school. We were supposed to spend the day together as part of a government assignment, but I wound up going with another girl who won third place in our class competition. He was gone for almost three weeks, then he was back and no one knew where he’d gone or why. He hardly looked my way, didn’t talk to me, and closed his Facebook account. He left me the book on my birthday and other than that, it was just a look once in a while that let me know he was working really hard at keeping his distance.
    The problem was that I couldn’t keep myself from thinking about him. He had almost driven a permanent wedge between me and Jake, but then backed off. He took the heat when Jake could have been mad at me, and then he told me the thing that shook me to my core; he and Jake had the same father, a fact Jake was still in the dark about. Saxon also told me that he didn’t want Jake to know, didn’t want to disappoint him as a blood brother in addition to disappointing him as a friend. He told me that if Jake wasn’t with me, he’d fight for me. And he’d vanished.
    I never told Jake. Beyond the whole problem of Saxon liking me, Jake and Saxon had grown up close, and Saxon had exposed Jake to a lot of vices. When Jake finally had enough of that crazy lifestyle, he cut Saxon completely out of his life, and he hadn’t dealt with him again until I came into the picture. It would make sense for me to stay as far away from Saxon as I could.
    There was just one problem.
    I could never quite wriggle out of Saxon’s grasp, no matter how hard I tried. And something in me didn’t want to. There was something about him that drew me in, whether I liked it or not. I wanted to talk to him more, specifically about the whole Jake thing, but he just avoided me or flat-out ignored me. It sucked, but there was nothing I could do about it.
    I cried a little at the scene where Marianne sees Willoughby at the ball and he brushes her off. It wasn’t that I wanted Saxon to want me or fight for me; it was just that if he felt that way and was open about it, we couldn’t even be friends. Jake hated him so much it wasn’t even an option to bring it up to him. It was a lost cause.
    Before I knew it, my phone rang. I slid my window up and helped him in. He smiled and put a finger to his lips.
    Jake had snuck in before, but he didn’t like to make a habit of it. Especially since he met my parents. He knew they didn’t really approve of him, and doing anything to make that sense stronger didn’t work for him at all.
    But there was the undeniable attraction between us that always managed to skew his judgment and force him to bend his rules. Which worked for me.
    I had never been much of a rebel, but Mom’s new tactics were teaching me something I don’t think she expected; I was learning that I had to do what I needed to do without worrying about who I was hurting. I had to be a little selfish.
    I knew Mom would have freaked out if she knew that was how I interpreted her speech.
    Jake shed everything down to his boxers and slid the neat pile under my bed. He wiggled in between the covers and snuggled up to me. His clothes and skin were still icy cold from running in the night air, across the fields and through the woods. He didn’t park close because he was afraid someone would recognize the truck. I put my hands on his body, ran them up and