Breathless: A Firelight Novella (HarperTeen Impulse) by Sophie Jordan

joins me inside and starts the engine.
    “I don’t live far,” he says.
    I nod, hands clasping my knees.
    “Anna knows you’re coming. She’s excited. I told her all about you.”
    I shift my weight nervously. “What did you tell her?”
    He grins. “That you can outswim me.”
    I wince. I should probably have held back in that race.
    “Course she doesn’t believe me. I hold the school record. You’ll have to tell her yourself.”
    We pass through the town. I’ve seen it before with my parents, but I’m still enchanted with its quaint glass storefronts and town square with the gazebo positioned in the middle. It’s like something out of a movie.
    We take a right at the last light in town. The houses are mostly siding and rock: narrow two-storied structures all very similar to one another. When we pull into his driveway behind another car, I know I wouldn’t be able to pick it out again from its neighbors. I reach for the door handle, but he stalls me with a hand on my arm. “Wait.”
    I watch as he climbs out and moves around the front of his Jeep.
    I hesitate as he opens the door for me, perplexed at the courtesy. It’s not that the guys back home are rude … or that I don’t think I deserve this kind of courtesy. I’m just plain Az to them all. The girl they grew up with. Unexciting. Predictable. Except in his eyes I am exciting. Special. Someone you hurry to get the door for. He’s brought those feelings to me and it makes me all buoyant and giddy inside like when I plunge through deep waters.
    I lower my feet to the ground. His hand grazes my back as we step onto the porch, oh-so-lightly, barely touching but there. The giddy, bubbly sensation returns, swimming just beneath the surface of my ever-tightening skin. I inhale, steadying my nerves, reaching for calm.
    He opens the front door, waving me inside. I step in and am greeted by the sounds of a television.
    And then I see her sitting cross-legged on a couch, a plaid blanket draped over her lap. The pretty girl from the pond, the one I fished out of the bottom. The girl Troy is determined to date. All this zips through my mind.
    “Hey!” Her entire face brightens as she spots me. “You came!”
    Even the nasty bruise at the center of her forehead doesn’t detract from her prettiness. In fact, it might heighten her looks, enhancing the natural peach of her skin, the high sheen to her blond hair, the brightness of her eyes, the gently sculpted cheekbones. If she’s the day, then her brother is the night with his dark looks.
    “I said I was going to pick her up, didn’t I?”
    “You also said she outswam you.” She grins at me. “No offense, but he’s such a liar, right?”
    I follow Tate into the living room, sitting down beside him on the smaller couch. “Of course.”
    He looks at me with wide, affronted eyes. “Hey! You know it’s true. Why don’t you want her to know how good you are?”
    I only smile.
    “So Tate says you’re from Wyoming.” She sits up, arranging the throw so that it still covers her legs, and I can’t help wondering what else he’s said about me. “That’s cool—how are you enjoying our little backwoods?”
    Her backwoods is practically metropolitan compared to the pride. “It’s really nice.”
    “Tate said you’re here for a month. You’ll have to let us show you around. You already found the pond, but we’ve got a few other secret spots. Some great hiking up in the mountains.”
    The front door opens then. A burly man enters the room. The smell of stale beer surrounds him.
    Tate stands abruptly, and everything about him is tense: his voice, the set to his shoulders. “Dad. What are you doing home?”
    Tate’s father pauses in the front hall. “Didn’t know I needed to alert you of my comings and goings.” He scans the three of us with red-rimmed eyes, his gaze resting the longest on me. “Who’s she?”
    “This is Az,” Anna quickly supplies.
    Swaying slightly on his feet, he hangs his cap