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“Pissed enough to make them sit out the next game, so…”

“Ouch.” I wince. It won’t matter so much to Kevin, whose life is a game. But Elijah takes everything seriously. It’s probably because his dad is the rep for cool, calm control. “How’d Elijah take that?”

Holt starts to move his thumb over my hip. The movement is absent, but it sets a fire ablaze inside me. Prickles of heat scatter across my flesh and it takes actual work to keep my breaths from turning sharp and uneven as they spill from between my lips.

A little grin pulls at his.

I think he knows what he’s doing to me.

“Holt?”

“You’re so pretty, Faye.”

Yeah, there’s no hope of keeping my cool now. That heat that’s been working its way into my face since he claimed the space beside me on my bed is now shining like a beacon. My blush is so hot it’s painful.

His name is a husky whisper as it falls from my tongue. “Holt.”

“Fuck,” he breathes. “I want to kiss you.”

“Then kiss me.” I can’t believe I said that.

The weight of his hand on my hip becomes heavy with pressure. I give into his silent request easily as I roll onto my back. Holt rolls into me, and my breath catches as his body hovers above mine. His hand is still on my hip, his touch burning me through the fabric of my jeans.

My heart is beating so hard, I can hear it between my ears.

Can he hear it?

“So pretty,” he breathes. And then his lips are on mine.

Like every time Holt kisses me, his lips are hot on mine. Searing.

He’s like fire.

He’s wild and hot and just like fire, he devours everything in his path. He set my heart and soul ablaze from the very first moment I looked into his dark brown eyes, and he’s been carving out pieces of me since.

He’s so bright, like flame in the dark—no, not flame. Holt is like a star, burning brightly in a black sky.

Everything about him draws the eye, just like the brightest star in the night sky. He’s popular and talented and it doesn’t matter who you are, fighting the pulling orbit of Holt is impossible. He draws you in and keeps you there. He doesn’t even have to try.

Some souls just possess that shine. The shine that burns bright, but not always for long. Like Uncle Luke…

We lost Uncle Luke a few years back. Now that I’m older, I think that loss fueled a lot of Dad’s desire to move and start fresh here in Rubble Ridge. Uncle Luke was Dad’s younger brother, and I’ll always remember him as one of the best men I’ve ever known. He had the best laugh. Full and rich and real. It was so unlike anyone else’s; you couldn’t mistake it. Not ever.

Mom always said Uncle Luke was a bright star. He was a busy man, busier than most. Not in the way some people are busy with work, stressed and overwhelmed with the tasks that litter their to-do list. He was busy with life. He was always doing something, hiking, fishing, flying down the highway on his bike. He lived fast and free.

That’s why it was so devastating when he got the diagnosis. Advanced stage four lung cancer. He didn’t even smoke.

It took the wind out of his sails and then it took his life. In the span of months.

Dad said he ignored the signs. That he didn’t want to face the reality of his illness.

I think he was just too busy with life to feel the tug of death.

At his funeral, Mom said it was the ones who burned the brightest who God always called home too soon.

Holt burns bright like Uncle Luke.

My heart squeezes with painful fear in my chest, and my fingers curl into his hair to pull him to me. I need to feel him. All of him.