Page 105 of Rekindle My Heart

She let Karma out once more, then locked up the house and went to bed. She set the book on her nightstand and turned off the light.

Her exhale echoed in the room. Restless energy flooded her limbs. She flopped to her left. A minute later, she punched her pillow. Two minutes later, she flipped to the right. Her gaze locked on the faint outline of the book.

“Fuck it.” The pull of her sister’s words was too strong to ignore. She turned on the light and snagged the diary. “Sorry, Sarah, but I have to know.”

The spine crackled as she opened the book to the last entry.

Sarah’s scrolling penmanship had Erica blinking away tears for the second time that evening.

The last entry was the night before she died. She wrote of class and Jake and how his hair waved over his left eye. The page was full of it.

Jake?Erica racked her brain trying to remember a guy named Jake.

Nothing about Ryan. Erica scrunched her brows. If her sister was so in love with Ryan that she ended her life over their interlude, wouldn’t she have been rambling on about his waves?

Maybe she didn’t end her life? Could it really have just been an accident? Another case of teenage drunk driving? She had been drinking at the end-of-the-year party that night.

Erica had always believed it was her sister’s broken heart that had ended her life. Now… doubts crept in.

Flipping back a few pages, Erica found more scribbling about Jake. His broad shoulders, the way he smelled.

“Huh.” She looked at the snoring Karma curled up at the end of the bed. “She loved Ryan, didn’t she? Who was this Jake dude?”

Karma didn’t move.

Back to the diary, she flipped back a few weeks and scanned entries. Prom. Erica worked the edge of her thumbnail with her teeth. The scrolling words of young lust and being swept away had her attention riveted to the page.

His hands slipped under my cheer sweater.

It read like a cheesy romance novel.

I had planned to wait for marriage, but when the feel of his calloused hands moved up my torso, I knew tonight would be the night I lost my virginity.

Erica closed the book on her hand. She couldn’t read this. The memory of Ryan’s hand skirting the small of her back, caressing her spine, one vertebra after another. A long, slow, deliciously sweet exploration of her body. She shivered.

She carefully opened the book and resumed reading. The self-masochist in her made her do it.

His lips kissed my eyes, one, then the other. Closing them was the hardest thing I’d ever done. For it meant I couldn’t gaze into his blue irises.

Blue? Ryan’s eyes weren’t blue.

Erica scanned the X-rated lines until she came to the one word that made her breath catch in her throat. Jake. Not Ryan.

She flipped the page and shot straight up in bed. Karma raised his big head and threw a look of disgust at her for interrupting his beauty sleep.

“Ryan caught her. That’s why he broke it off.” Her jaw dropped open, and her mouth moved like a guppy. Why? Why would she do that to Ryan?

Screw sleep. Erica needed to know. She flipped back a few more weeks in the diary and started reading. Several entries held comments about the way she caught Ryan gazing at… Her? Erica.

No. Sarah must have misunderstood.

The more she read, the more she realized Sarah didn’t miss much. More than once she noted that Erica was pining over Ryan.

Shit, she hadn’t thought she was that obvious.

Going back further, she found entries from late September, before Ryan and Sarah started dating.

The words Erica read flamed heat in her belly. Her face broke out in a sweat. She finished the entry and slammed the book shut.

“She asked him out. She’d seen, she knew, and she still asked him out.” Hell, according to her sister’s own words, she pursued Ryan, planned out a seduction. Shit.

Erica threw off the covers and paced. She’d done everything for her sister. She’d even denied her attraction to Ryan because her baby sister had eyes for him. But she hadn’t realized Sarah knew Erica had feelings for him before they dated. Hell, she’d thought Ryan asked Sarah out.

As she wore a trench in her carpet, she thought about all the times she watched them leave on a date. Sarah wrapped her arm around his or leaned into him.

Erica pulled at her hair. None of this mattered. Either way, Erica would have stepped back and let her sister date him. She did anything to make her happy.

But would Sarah do the same for you? the voice in her head whispered.

She’d always thought yes, but now… she didn’t know.