Read The Secret 00.5 The Prelude of Ella and Micha for Free Online Page A

the room, slamming the door behind her.
    “Jesus, what a freak,” Tammy mutters. When I glare at her, she narrows her eyes at me. “What? She is.”
    Shaking my head, I chase after Ella, disregarding Ethan’s protest to just let her cool off. By the time I make it to the living room, the crowd has doubled, and the air is so stuffy I can barely breathe. Still, I search for her in the sea of bodies, needing to find her, to fix this.
    But how exactly are you going to do that?
    After doing countless laps around the house, I finally stop inside the kitchen, getting discouraged. “Fuck!” I growl. Finding Ella is going to be nearly impossible with this many people around.
    Pissed off at myself, I shove through the people, heading for the back door so I can go outside and smoke. Maybe a little fresh air and nicotine will clear my head. When I step out the door, though, I find exactly what I was looking for.
    Ella is sitting on the icy bottom stair of the porch with a cup in her hand with her jacket off and goose bumps dot her flesh. For a brief moment, I stand at the top of the stairway, staring at her, trying to figure out what the heck to say. I’m sorry? Yeah, I don’t think so. I’m the opposite of sorry. That kiss made me realize just how much I was missing out on—behind the connection of lips, there’s supposed to be emotion, passion, heat, and intensity instead of boredom.
    “What are you doing out here without a jacket.” I sink down beside her and reach for the zipper on my hoodie. “You’re going to freeze to death.”
    Her body jolts from my appearance, and she drops her cup. Clear liquid spills across the snow as it rolls down the steps and into driveway. Her eyelashes flutter furiously as her gaze locks on me.
    “What are you doing out here?” she asks, her breath reeking of vodka.
    Jesus, what did she do, drink a whole damn bottle in the twenty minutes it took me to find her?
    “I’m saving your ass from freezing.” I shuck off my jacket and drape it over her shoulders.
    “I’m not cold.” It takes her a moment before she stubbornly gives in and slips her arms through the sleeves. Then she lowers her head into her hands. “Why did you do that?”
    “Do what?” I ask, even though I know exactly what she’s talking about.
    She scowls at me. “You know what. Make that bottle purposefully land on me.”
    “You know me better than I thought,” I respond, searching her eyes for an indication that I haven’t fucked up our friendship. But she’s indecipherable. “Was it really that bad, though?”
    “Depends on why you did it.” Her voice wobbles the slightest bit.
    I shrug, stretching my legs out as I stare up at the stars. “Out of curiosity, I guess.”
    “Curiosity of what?” She lifts her head. “We’ve already done the whole curious kissing thing. Why do we need to do it again?”
    I rub my chilled arms. “Maybe I just wanted to see if things had changed.” If my feelings had changed. My feelings for you. And they have. They really, really have. More than I realized.
    “Micha, I …” Her breath puffs out in a cloud in front of her face as she begins to panic. “Please, just say you did it for fun, and it didn’t mean anything,” she whispers, pleads, begs. “Because I can’t handle anything else.”
    My heart breaks.
    Shatters.
    Scatters across the ground.
    Like fragments of ice.
    “Well, you know me.” My voice is dry, humorless as I stare at the ground. “I’m all about the joking and random kisses.” When I’m finally able to look at her again, I come to an excruciating realization. Even though the kiss happened, it can’t ever really happen. Ella and I can’t really become anything more than what we are, not right now, anyway. Ella is relying on me to say so; otherwise, she’s going to break apart. And, if I really do love her, I’ll do everything in my power to keep her together like I’ve been doing for the last twelve years.
    “I didn’t want it to