All Chapters of To my Romeo, I am dying: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

His hand was still cupped under my jaw when he asked if he could tell me something, and I already knew from the way his voice shook that whatever came next was going to change everything between us.We were sitting on the old dock at the lake, my nosebleed just stopped, his shirt balled up and forgotten beside us, the sky gone that deep orange it only turns in the last twenty minutes before dark. A bullfrog had started up its evening racket somewhere behind us. None of it mattered, because Gray was looking at me the way he'd never quite looked at me before.I'd known Grayson Locke since I was six years old. He lived next door, and back then he was just the loud kid who fell out of trees and once tried to trade me his goldfish for my bike. By eight he'd broken his arm in two places falling out of the treehouse he'd built to impress me, and I'd been the only person who signed his cast with anything other than a name. I drew a lopsided crayon picture he still swore looked more like a dog

By lunch the next day I still hadn't decided anything. I walked into the cafeteria empty-handed, hoping for a fire drill, a hurricane, anything that would make the decision for me.Nothing came.Gray stood up from our table wearing that look, the one that meant he'd worked up his nerve. Conversations at the tables around us started dying off one by one, the way they do right before something happens and everyone can feel it coming."So," he said, loud enough that people two tables over turned their heads. "Homecoming's in two weeks.""Gray.""I know we've been kind of unofficial about this whole thing." He rubbed the back of his neck. Under any other circumstances I'd have thought it was the sweetest thing in the world. "But I want everyone to know. I want to take you as my actual girlfriend. Not the secret thing where I sneak over your fence like a criminal."Sable Winters had gone still behind him, fork frozen halfway to her mouth.My head was already three moves ahead. Say yes and

I spent the whole walk to the auditorium trying to work out how much Sable actually knew, and my stomach had flipped itself inside out three times before I got there.Turned out to be nothing. A bluff, or some half-truth she'd blown up bigger than it was, because when I finally caught her by the vending machines, all she had was gossip about a boy on the swim team that didn't connect to anything real. I almost laughed with relief, then remembered relief wasn't exactly the right feeling for any of this.It didn't last. Gray found me ten minutes later in the parking lot, and one look told me the reprieve was already over."Explain something," he said. "Why does half the football team think you told Coach Reyes I've been faking injuries to skip two-a-days?""What? I never said that.""That's the story going around. A month ago I'd have walked straight up to whoever started it and shut it down for you, no questions asked. That's what I do. That's what I've always done for you." His voice

I caught up to her before she reached the parking lot, bag hanging open at my side, hands shaking hard enough that I gripped the strap just to hide it. She heard me coming and didn't slow down. She let me follow her across three rows of cars like she already knew I would."Give it back.""Give what back?" She kept walking. "I don't have anything of yours, Josie.""You know exactly what I mean."She stopped. Turned slow on her heel and studied me with a look I hadn't seen on her before. Not the smugness from a minute ago. Something closer to calculation, like she was still working out an answer in her head."How long have you known?"I didn't say anything. My face answered for me."Wow." She said it quietly, almost to herself, glancing off toward the buses lining the curb. For one breath, something in her shifted, softer, almost younger than seventeen. Then it shut again, fast. "And you weren't going to tell anyone. Not even Gray?""That's none of your business.""It's a lot of my busi

Gray asked if I was sick and I couldn't get air into my lungs for a second, actually couldn't, like something had reached in and pressed down. Stage lights buzzing somewhere overhead. Somebody laughing out in the hallway. A chair scraping backstage where Dana was probably still working on that backdrop. All of it too loud except my own heartbeat which I could feel banging in my throat, which is a stupid way to describe it but that's genuinely what it felt like."I'm fine," I said, and smiled the way you smile when you need somebody to stop looking at you a certain way.He didn't buy it. Obviously he didn't buy it, he never had, not once in eleven years. "You've been saying that a lot.""Because I'm tired, that's all, it's tech week.""You fainted Tuesday. In the hallway, by the trophy case, Marissa had to catch you." His voice wasn't raised. That was somehow worse than if it had been. "You threw your lunch out today, I saw you do it, you didn't even open the bag. Three nosebleeds this