Falling for Fallon (Oak Hill 2)

She nodded her head, her lower lip now steady. She angled her delicate jaw toward me, her blue eyes glistening. “It’s not really a secret; it’s just complicated.”

I studied her, my eyes squinting. “Regardless, keeping shit inside isn’t healthy. I know you don’t know me, but you should tell someone… something. It’s just…” I turned my head away. “Secret keeping can make you feel… heavy.”

She sighed. “You know a whole lot about secret-keeping, Emmett?”

I shrugged. “I already told you I used to keep secrets… until I stopped giving a fuck. I used to hide a lot of stuff inside. It made me feel… suffocated.” Her face changed, realization hitting her head on. I knew right then I had hit the nail on the head. “You feel that, right? Suffocated? Heavy? Like the world is on your shoulders? Like you’re going to explode?”

She sucked in a breath, biting her lip with her teeth. I turned my head away because it was a hella hot sight: Fallon with her crystal blue eyes, light pink lip pulled beneath her white teeth. She was breathtaking, and I’d never been so aroused by the sight of someone’s face until her. It may have been the whole “I’m right here, but you can’t have me” thing, but whatever it was, it was making my jeans tighter.

“How do you know me so well and we’ve only just met?”

I grinned. “It’s easy to recognize all the signs of the things I’d felt before.”

“So… did you tell all your secrets? And then, poof, you were better?”

I crinkled my brow. “No… not really. It took a little soul-searching and a lot of collateral damage to finally become who I was meant to be.”

“And who was Emmett—” She gasped, covering her mouth. “I don’t even know your last name!”

I chuckled. “Lanning. My last name is Lanning… Fallon Addington.”

She blushed. “Okay then… who was Emmett Lanning meant to be? The super-attractive tattoo artist with no visible tattoos who likes to randomly help sad, rich girls with terrible destinies find themselves?”

My face split in two from the ridiculous smile forming. “Visible tattoos? Who told you I have tattoos? And you think I’m attractive?”

Fallon quickly covered her reddening face with her hands, giggling. “I hate myself sometimes.”

I laughed as I took my hands and pushed hers down off her face. “Alright, rule number one, Fallon: if I’m going to help this ‘sad, rich girl with a terrible destiny find herself,’ there will be no more hiding your face. You’re too beautiful to do that, and it’s pretty cute when you blush.”

Three, two, one… and her slightly red face just turned the color of a tomato. I laughed out loud.

“I didn’t think your face could get any redder!”

“Ugh!” she shouted. “I hate my pale skin!”

Then our laughter filled the inside of my car.

She let out a few more good laughs. “Okay, I’ll stop hiding my face, just… as long as you really can help me. I don’t know why you want to, but I…” She looked up to the top of my car, breathing out a few good breaths before turning her gaze to me. Her head was resting on the headrest, her brown hair falling back away from her face. “I feel kind of lost. Or… like I’m cut in two. Sometimes I feel like I’m living two separate lives.”

I felt a pain in my chest, and it was brought to my attention—pretty fucking quickly, I might add—that I was already extremely protective over her. It didn’t make sense, because I didn’t know her at all, but it didn’t seem to really matter.

“I’ll help you act out this crazy…” I smiled, “this crazy, fun bucket list thing that you need to do in order to… accept your future? Is that what it is? You’re trying to get out all your fun before you marry this guy? I don’t get it, but if it’ll help you find yourself, then I’m down, babe.”

Fallon’s eyes widened at that last part, and mine did, too.

I just called her babe. Like she was mine.

She wasn’t mine, and I highly doubted she ever would be.

I was okay with pretending, though.

We brought the deep conversation to an end shortly after that moment. We walked closely together into the dress shop, the smell of overpowering perfume hitting us head on.

“I feel like I need a gas mask.” I gagged.

Fallon coughed. “Welcome to Priscilla’s. It always smells like a thousand dying roses were thrown all over the floor in here.”

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