Fearless

Chapter 1
I blinked a few times before shielding my eyes from the rays of sunlight that filtered through the blinds of my window. I yawned loudly as I stretched my entire body, my toes curling in at the end of my bed. I sighed heavily as I realized what waking up meant – that today was Monday, and another week of school was just beginning.

Tossing the covers off my body, I rolled out of bed and headed straight towards the bathroom, my feet dragging me the whole way there. Mondays have never been a friend of mine, and like so many other people, I only prayed that the week would go as fast as the weekends always seemed to do.

After spending what I considered enough time making myself look as presentable as I was willing to try, I left the bathroom and pulled out a pair of jeans and an oversized sweater from the wooden dresser in my bedroom. Squeezing into the extremely tight jeans, I saw my phone light up out of the corner of my eye on the nightstand. I grabbed it and read the text message from my best friend, Savannah, who was informing me that she’d be pulling up any minute.

Snatching my backpack from the floor and my house key from my desk, I left my room and made my way down the stairs and into the empty kitchen. I stole an apple off the counter of the island and headed to the front door where Vannah, and with her impeccable timing, was just pulling into the driveway.

I waved her down as I bit into the bright red apple. She had the top of her gleaming white convertible rolled down and I slid into the passenger seat. My hand unconsciously went for the tuning dial of the radio, but she swatted my hand away before I could change the station.

“Got a problem with my music?” she asked, her voice demanding although a smirk graced her face.

“Too bubbly for this time of the morning,” I said with a mouthful of apple.

“Well aren’t you attractive,” she retorted before turning her attention to backing out of my driveway.

“Aren’t I always?” I fired back, smirking as I saw her roll her eyes. She reached down and turned the volume up, just to get under my skin, but I just laughed and ignored the god-awful pop one hit wonders spilling out of her stereo.

We pulled into the school parking lot nearly twenty minutes later and we both slowly made our way out of her car and into the school. I waved goodbye to Savannah as she headed off in the direction of her locker and I headed towards mine. We, unfortunately, weren’t in a single class together, but that mostly had to do with the fact that my schedule was bombarded with AP classes while hers were mostly electives. Savannah had already developed senioritis before the school year had even really begun.

I ruffled through the confines of my locker, searching for my calculus book. Once I had both the book and my folder in hand, I slammed my locker shut and turned swiftly around. I’d always had a tendency to block my surroundings out and because of this trait I developed, I hadn’t noticed how close the rowdy deep voices behind me or the sound of footsteps getting closer. As I quickly turned around, not paying attention, I was completely knocked into by a massively hard body, and I watched as the papers from my folder spill onto the floor and litter the ground.

I cursed under my breath and immediately bent down to start gathering my notes and old homework. A movement out of the corner of my eye caught my attention and my eyes focused sharply on a tan hand and an arm that was working to gather some of the papers that went flying. My eyes followed up the arm, across the shoulder blade, and to the face of none other than Mason Parker. My green eyes connected with his piercing blue ones and for a moment, I was completely breathless. It had been so long since I was this close to Mason and I hadn’t even realized he was the one I had ran into.

After a moment of neither of us breaking eye contact, my eyes left his and looked down at his lips, which were turning up into a smirk. “Lainey,” he murmured so softly that I wouldn’t have thought he said anything if I hadn’t been staring at his lips. My eyes snapped back up to his and I felt my face flush from embarrassment. My mouth opened to apologize for running into him, but before a sound could pass my lips, a light colored hand came swooping into my line of sight and pulled Mason up.

“Mason!” came the voice of Alex, one of Mason’s football teammates. Alex went on to say something else to Mason, but neither of us had yet to break our eye contact. “That was some wild party the other night, man. I tell you, best one yet!” Alex exclaimed while pulling Mason away from me. Mason broke eye contact with me and I looked down, my face still burning bright red. I continued gathering the papers that had spilled all across the floor before shoveling them back into the folder.

Alex and Mason were retreating slowly in the opposite direction of where I was heading.

I stood up straight and let out a deep breath and tried to calm my racing heart. I mentally told myself to calm down, that I shouldn’t be overreacting like this, and that Mason is the biggest jerk to ever grace the halls of this high school. I scolded myself for getting caught up in such a ridiculous moment. After all, Mason had left everything I thought I knew about him a long time ago, and like I had told him, there was no turning back.

So that’s what I did. I threw my backpack over my shoulders and I went straight to class, without a single glance back.