All the while I kept looking for Sadie.

I grabbed my phone sending her a text asking where she was.

Unfortunately, if she was with a guy I wouldn’t get a reply—and cell service was spotty on the fairgrounds anyway. I was so giving her a piece of my mind for this. I hadn’t even wanted to come! And of course I’d gotten a ride with her, so I was trapped at the frigging Clarke County fair twenty to thirty minutes from home. In other words, there was no way I could walk. And since my mom didn’t even own a cellphone it wasn’t like I could call her—and she’d be working in her studio at this time, which meant she wouldn’t even hear the home phone ring.

“Are you lost?”

I squeaked at the sound of the voice and took a few steps back. I almost fell in a hole and the guy reached out to steady me.

“Whoa, are you okay?” He asked, flicking dark hair from his eyes. It was slightly damp with sweat, as was his whole body. I wondered what he’d been doing to get that sweaty, but then decided I’d rather not know. While I watched him he pulled a baseball cap out of his back pocket and fixed it onto his head, pulling the brim down low so that half his face was shadowed.

“I’m fine.” I straightened my cardigan and squared my shoulders. “I’m…I’m waiting for someone.” I didn’t want to give this guy the impression he could take advantage of me.

He grinned crookedly, tilting his head. “Something tells me you’re lying.” He scratched his stubbled chin. He couldn’t be more than two years older than me, maybe nineteen or twenty at the most, but something in his silvery gray eyes made him seem so much older. Like he’d had a rough life or something. It made me a little more trusting of him. I could relate to rough. My dad was an alcoholic and before he walked out on us things had been bad. “I promise I don’t bite.”

“I can’t find my friend,” I shrugged. “I’m sure she’ll show up eventually.” I looked around—for the thousandth time—hoping Sadie was about to jump out from behind one of the stands and scream, “Gotcha!” But she didn’t, of course.

“Would you like me to wait with you?” He asked, tapping his fingers along his jean clad leg.

I looked around at all the people milling around and decided there wasn’t much this guy could do to me in public.

“That would be great,” I smiled. “Thank you for offering.”

His lips twisted, almost as if he was trying not to laugh at me. “I’m going to grab a bottle of water and then we can find a table.”

“Okay.” I fell into step beside him. I checked my phone and wasn’t surprised to find nothing from Sadie.

He bought a bottle of water from one of the vendors and cheese fries—the kind with the liquid cheese that grossed me out.

“Come on,” he tilted his head towards a free picnic table. “Let’s just sit down for a while and look for your friend. What exactly does she look like?”

“Tall, brown hair, pretty,” I shrugged.

He laughed. “You just described half of the girls here. Although, none of them are as pretty as you,” he winked.

My cheeks heated and I looked down. I wasn’t used to being called pretty. Most of the people that I went to school with, guys and girls, thought I was weird. I was different, and people didn’t seem to understand different. It was all too easy to pass me up as odd.

“Surely you know you’re pretty,” the guy added. “I think I might be developing a crush on your freckles.”

When I was little I hated my freckles. None of the other kids had them and I’d been embarrassed, but as I got older I learned to love them because they were a part of me. My mom always told me there was no point in not loving yourself, because you can’t change who you are and might as well embrace it.

“What’s your name?” I asked him, wanting to steer the topic of conversation away from myself.

“Maddox.” He answered, wiping his cheese covered fingers on a napkin. “Yours?”

“Emma.”

“Emma,” he repeated. “I like that.”

“Um…thank you?” It came out as a question.

He chuckled, like my awkwardness was cute or something. “Are you from around here, Emma?”

“About twenty or so minutes from here,” I shrugged.

“Winchester?” He asked.

“Uh…yeah…how’d you know?”

“Don’t worry,” he laughed, “I’m not a creep, it’s just where I’m from.”

“Oh,” I relaxed.

“We have a lot in common,” he continued, eating another heart attack inducing cheese fry.

“We do?”

“Yeah,” he nodded.

“I don’t see how we have much in common except where we live…”

“Really?” He quirked a brow. “You look like you don’t want to be here and I don’t want to be here either. That’s another thing we have in common.”

“I don’t like crowds,” I mumbled.

“What a coincidence,” he grinned widely. “I don’t either!”

I narrowed my eyes at him.

“What?” He frowned. “You don’t believe me?”

“I don’t know you,” I countered. “How could I tell if you were being serious or sarcastic?”

“Then why don’t you get to know me,” he suggested. “Go on a date with me.”

I gaped at him, unable to form a coherent sentence. “You’re very presumptuous.”

“I’m not asking you to go to bed with me, that would be presumptuous. A date allows two people to get to know each other in a no stress environment.”

“No stress?” I laughed. “I hardly consider a date as no stress.”

He tapped his fingers against the top of the table. I was beginning to wonder if it was a nervous habit or something.

“So…are you saying no the date?”

“Yes. No. I don’t know,” I stammered. “You’re making me nervous.” My hands wrung together beneath the table where he couldn’t see.

He chuckled, taking off the hat and running his fingers through his hair before replacing it. “I make lots of people nervous.”

“I’m only seventeen,” I warned, the words tumbling out of my mouth before I could stop them, “so if you’re like twenty-five you might want to give up now.”

“Do I looked twenty-five to you?” He laughed.

“No,” I squirmed.

“I just turned nineteen,” he supplied. “Is that too old for you?”

“I don’t date,” I mumbled, hoping he’d get tired of me and just leave.

“I find it hard to believe that a girl as beautiful as you doesn’t date.” He flicked the plastic top to the water bottle into the grass and I almost felt like scolding him for it, but I couldn’t find the words. “And I hardly think one date is that dangerous.”

“You’re annoyingly persistent,” I mumbled.

He grinned widely, his teeth perfectly straight and white. “I guess I just don’t want to get old and look back on my life and wonder what would’ve happened if I asked the pretty girl with freckles that I met at the fair out on a date,” he rambled.

This guy? Was he for real? And yet I found myself succumbing to his charms. “Fine, I’ll go on a date with you,” I mumbled, agreeing mostly to get him to shut up. As soon as I finished speaking I realized I’d just agreed to go on a date with a virtual stranger.

“Excellent,” he grinned, and I couldn’t stop my smile, “and wear that hat, I like it.”

Wait until I told Sadie that one.

“Any word from your friend?” He asked, eyeing my phone that lay on the table.

I checked it even though I knew there was no message. “Nothing,” I mumbled.

“You need to find a better friend,” he joked.

“I think you might be right,” I frowned.

He stood up and held his hand out for me. “Well, we’re already here, we might as well have fun.”

I eyed his hand like it was a live grenade that might detonate at any second. He wiggled his fingers, trying to coax me. Instead of accepting his hand I stood up to follow him. He let his hand drop to his side and smiled to show that he wasn’t offended.

He started to walk away, assuming I would follow, and I called, “Maddox!”

“Yeah?” He turned around.

“Your trash…are you just going to leave it?” I frowned.