Page 1 of Little Sunshine
Prologue
MILA
“Ithink we should break up.”
Wait, what?
Standing in my open doorway, I tilted my head as I looked up at CJ. Tall. Hot in that seventeen-year-old way that was still kinda boyish but almost a man. My boyfriend of almost six months. My first real one.
The love of my sixteen-year-old life.
Or so he’d said.
Studying his somber expression, I waited for him to crack a smile and tell me he was kidding. He loved to prank me. He said it was hilarious.
I didn’t really agree, but it made him happy, so whatever.
But there was no amusement in his expression. No twinkle in his dark eyes. No look of love or—more commonly—horniness. Not even a hint of a smile.
Instead, his lip was curled in disgust. As if those same lips hadn’t just been pressed to mine minutes before. Like we hadn’t been making out on my couch while he’d pushed me to let him go further.
Go all the way.
And now he was dumping me.
“Okay,” I said. Not because it felt okay. God, it didn’t feel okay at all. I should’ve been used to the feeling, but the rejection stabbed away at my already battered heart.
CJ gritted his teeth at my one word, but his tone was gentle. “It’s not you.”
But it was.
I didn’t fit into his world. Our lives were too different. Maybe he was tired of sneaking over to the wrong side of the tracks. Maybe it was because I wouldn’t have sex with him.
Whatever the reason, I knew it was my fault.
For a moment, the invite to my bedroom hovered on the tip of my tongue. It wasn’t like I held on to my virginity because it had some imaginary value.
But I wasn’t going to sleep with any random guy who showed me interest. Or who I could get something from.
I wasn’t my mother.
“Okay,” I repeated, at a loss of what else to say. I just wanted him gone.
CJ didn’t get the message. He kept talking, making it seem like he was trying to make me feel better when I knew it was the opposite. “I need more freedom. I’m still young. I need to be able to go where I want. Hang out with friends. Just live without someone grilling me and being all…”
Clingy.
He didn’t say the word, but he didn’t have to.
We both knew it was there.
For someone who’d said it wasn’t about me, his reasons were exclusively about me. My faults. My weaknesses.
My issues.
“Okay,” I said, yet again.
“That’s all you have to say?”
