Redemption Hills: The Complete Collection

13. Aster

THIRTEEN

ASTER

Little girl dreams…

Really, I should have known better than to have believed in them. Known better than to wish upon the stars when I could never rise high enough to touch them.

I’d been shaped and molded since the days I’d sat in front of my dressing mirror as a tiny child. Before she’d passed, my mother would brush my long, brown locks and tell me the order of my life as if it might be a fairytale rather than a horror story.

It hadn’t taken me all that long to see it for what it was. To recognize something in our lives was amiss.

Perhaps that was why I’d buried myself in the pages of books. In fantasies and faraway lands where this one never existed, and I could be anyone I wanted to be.

I guessed I shouldn’t have been surprised it was there that I first saw you. When I’d been nudged out of a love story that had my pulse racing and my heart in my throat when I’d felt the shimmery disturbance come whispering down the hall.

I’d peered over the couch to find you staring back.

As if you’d felt it, too.

The tall, beautiful boy with black hair and the greenest eyes.

Intrigue.

It sparked and glimmered and called across the space.

Christof nudged you to move along.

I should have let you go and forgotten that I’d ever seen you.

It was forbidden for me to speak to anyone who walked these halls. I really wasn’t supposed to be here at all, but my papa knew my love for books, and my excursions to the library were our little secret.

I waited until you were alone because I somehow needed you to become my secret, too.

I peered around the door at you sitting so unsure at the desk with your backpack at your feet, awkward and confident at the same time.

You didn’t belong there. I knew it in an instant. The same way I knew that I didn’t, either.

“Why are you hiding?” you’d muttered, staring ahead without glancing my way.

I held your first words like one of those dreams.

“Because I have to.”

Then you turned and studied me like I was a mystery. “Are you going to get into trouble?”

My head frantically shook. “No. I’m going to get you into trouble.”

You’d smirked. “Do I look like the kind of guy who minds? I think I can handle it.”

I should have warned you that you would.

But I’d wanted a different story. A better story. And I knew I wanted it with you.

My North Star, my North Star.

It was the first day I believed in you.