Losing Cassie Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Discover More Books By Third Cousins

  A Synopsis & Table Of Contents...

  Inspiring Words

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Copyright

  Love's Not Popular

  Losing Cassie

  Book 1

  Contemporary Romance

  By: Tina Lee & Third Cousins

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  A SYNOPSIS & TABLE OF CONTENTS...

  Cassie is a popular girl and she knows it. In fact, when she’s asked to define the person that she is for her school yearbook, she ends up choosing that very word. But popularity can be a fickle thing. When Cassie starts to learn this, she realizes that everything she had built for herself is about to coming crashing down around her.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Discover More Books By Third Cousins

  Inspiring Words

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  DISCOVER MORE BOOKS BY THIRD COUSINS

  Copyright

  INSPIRING WORDS

  “Resilience is accepting your new reality, even if it's less good than the one you had before.”

  - Elizabeth Edwards

  CHAPTER 1

  “I know I said there weren’t any wrong answers, but you’re kind of missing the point,” Sam said. He was a scruffy-haired wannabe journalist with a bad lisp, and he was frustrated with me.

  I didn’t get it. I was answering his questions in the best way that I could.

  “You’ve already got a ton of pages in the yearbook dedicated to your cheerleading and extra-curricular activities,” he said. He looked resentful. He didn’t make it obvious, but it was there, lurking in the shadow of his ocean-blue eyes. “This should be about the person you are.”

  “The person I am?”

  He nodded. “You know, like what makes you, you?”

  I’d just told him that. I’d told him about my cheerleading and the pep rallies that I had led. I told him about the charity drives that I’d helped organize. What else was there to say?

  He sighed. “You’re just not getting it.

  I opened my mouth to say something about not being stupid, but he didn’t give me chance. “Look at it this way. If one of your friends had to describe you, then what would they say?”

  “This seems like a really dumb question,” I told him.

  “Well, no one else has had this much trouble with it.”

  My face dropped into a scowl. I’d known Sam since our first year in high school. He’d been some quiet, scrawny kid who struggled to make friends. I was the opposite. When I walked through the high school doors on my first day, I’d already started to curve out. My hair had been long, my features soft. I’d had no trouble getting friends. Within the first month I was dating a guy two years older than me.

  Sam was a nobody and he had no right to talk to me in the way that he was.

  “Well, I guess my friends would say that I’m popular.” I tilted my head as I spoke. I could feel thick, warm waves of triumph poring over me, as his face turned into a scowl.

  “Is that really what you want me to put?” he asked with a tone heavy with condescension.

  “There are worse things in the world to be remembered for,” I said. “I mean, let’s face it, at least I am going to be remembered.”

  He could hear the dig without me having to point it out. He sighed again. “What’s the matter?” I teased him. “Realizing that I’m right?”

  “Not at all,” he said calmly. “I’m just thinking about how very much I pity you.”

  “Excuse me?” He might be a writer for the yearbook, but that didn’t give him any right to talk to me like that. He was a nobody at the school. Didn’t he know how it worked? Didn’t he know that I was an adornment, a glittering feature that helped make the school, and especially our year, stand out? Didn’t he realize how hard a social butterfly had to work to make it seem effortless? I deserved his respect from the word go.

  “Oh, look at your cheeks turning all red,” he said. “What’s wrong, princess? Aren’t you used to people telling you it how it is?”

  “I get why you don’t have friends now,” I said coldly.

  “Oh, that’s a low blow,” he retorted quickly and I could tell that my words were bouncing off him with little effect, if any. “Anyway, do you really want me to put ‘popular’ down here, or do you want to give this another try when you’re not feeling like a total bitch?”

  “What the hell?” I snapped. “Have you been like this with everyone?”

  “Only the people who earn it.” He leaned back in his chair. I could tell that he was enjoying his fleeting moment of power and that it had gone to his head. “If you want, I could book you back in for the day after prom. I’ve got a few free spaces then.”

  “Do whatever the hell you want,” I said, getting to my feet. “If a bottom-feeder like you even knows what you want.”

  “Well, it takes one to know one,” he said brightly, as I pulled open the door. I hesitated. I didn’t want to leave with him having the last word. I didn’t want him to think that he’d won. It wouldn’t have been right. That wasn’t how the social structure at high school worked. He was a loser and I was popular. He needed to remember that.

  I turned around and looked at him. He looked a little surprised that I’d stopped making my exit. “Don’t you have a girlfriend?” I asked, as a revenge plot quickly formed in my mind.

  “Yeah, why?”

  He looked at me cautiously. It was the same kind of look that a hiker might give a poisonous snake. I could see him trying to calculate what move I was thinking of making next and how likely I would be to actually make it.

  I smiled at him and walked back over to the table. I could feel my cell phone pressing against my leg through my pocket. I slid it out and worked it so the camera feature came up.

  Without giving him a chance to move, I quickly dipped my head down and planted my lips on his cheek. The phone gave a little vibration as it recorded the picture, and before he had a chance to move I had stepped out of arm’s reach.

  “Well, I’m guessing that you don’t want her to see that,” I said coyly. He looked pissed. I could feel his sudden panic about the leverage I’d just created, and it tasted delicious.

  “What the hell?”

  “You’ll remember your place next time, won’t you?” I said, with an edge of warning that couldn’t be ignored. “I won’t have you talking to me as though I’m an idiot. That’s just not how things work around here.”

  “So, what?” he demanded, as he stood up and reached out for my phone. I clicked my tongue in a disapproving way and quickly put it back into my pocket. “You’re going to break me and my girlfriend up just because I was rude to you?”

  I shrugged. “Maybe,” I played with him. “I mean, you’ve been mean to me, so why shouldn’t I be mean to you?”

  “You’re a piece of work.” Sam glared at me, as though I had suddenly become his arch nemesis. “You think that because you’re popular that you have it all, but you don’t.”

  “I don’t?” I arched in an eyebrow in his direction. “Are you offering me something that you think I haven’t had yet? Let’s see it.”

  “You’re going
to wake up one day and find this princess thing all gone,” he warned me weakly.

  I didn’t bother to reply. He’d lost my interest. I had the leverage to make sure that he kept a respectful tongue in his mouth from now on, so I didn’t need to stick around and listen to his idle threats and prophesies. Plus, I was already late to meet Eric.

  CHAPTER 2

  The football field was on the other side of the school from the old, stuffy classroom which Sam had picked to interview people for the yearbook. The lawns and open spaces that lay in between the field and the school building were all vibrantly green and manicured to perfection. The buildings and grounds guy and his staff were die-hard perfectionists, which was something I could appreciate.

  The blossoms from the fruit trees which grew in a small orchard next to the school, were throwing sweetness into the sunny air. It was gorgeous day. I was glad that I’d picked a light, cotton crop top and short denim cut-offs that morning to wear, because if I’d have been wearing anything heavier, I would have been sweating like a beast.

  I could hear the heavy grunts and loud cries carrying from the field before I reached it. I could tell that Eric was out practicing. I smiled secretly to myself as I realized I could pick out his distinct grunt from all the others.

  I walked through the bleachers and took a seat. Eric had been playing football at the high school ever since he’d joined the school. He didn’t start in the first year like me and Sam, though; he’d only transferred in about a year before.

  Eric had been public interest number one when he’d first arrived. Of course that was in part down to the fact that he was British. We’d never had anyone British before at the school. People were walking up to him in the hallways and begging him to say stupid little phrases, so that they could have a laugh at the way he said them.

  I wasn’t like that though. His being British didn’t matter to me. The only thing that mattered was that he was the most gorgeous specimen of a male human that I had ever seen. He was that guy that you dream about. He’s the one you could spend a life time searching for. He was impossibly perfect. His face was almost too symmetrical, his hair almost too straight. Nothing was too much on him, though. Everything was just right.

  Eric was standing down on the grass with his teammates gathered around him, when I arrived. His football uniform was stained with grass and mud. I could tell from the way that the light was bouncing from his perfect, caramel tanned skin that he’d been pushing himself to the limits. Even his perky forelock was hanging down into his face, limp with sweat.

  I waited whatever they were doing to end and for the others to go wherever they had to go, before I headed down. But then I captured him before he could go get any sweatier.

  “Hey.” I wrapped my arms around his waist. Heat was radiating off him. I could feel it burning through the air around him and I wondered what effect he was having on the global warming crisis that everybody seemed to be talking about. “How was practice?”

  “Hey, you,” he said, turning to face me. He was smiling. He was smiling in the way that always brought a smile to my own lips, even when I didn’t feel particularly like smiling. “It was good; I think we’re going to destroy the final game.”

  “That’s good,” my words were getting muffled by his neck as I nuzzled into him. “You’re sure to get that scholarship if you win.”

  “I hope so,” he said into my hair. “Did you do your interview?” he asked, when I’d broken off our embrace. I loved him. I wanted to be close to him, but my love had its limits and those limits fell somewhere around the stink that he was emitting from all the sweat he’d produced.

  “I tried.”

  “You tried?”

  “It was that Sam,” I said. “I think he hates me or something.”

  “Why would he hate you?”

  “I have literally no idea. I don’t think I’ve ever said anything to him in my life, but he was treating me like an idiot.”

  “So, what happened? Are you still getting your feature in the yearbook?”

  “I don’t know.” I looked down at the field. My black canvas pumps had mud pushing up their sides. I could feel the dampness of the earth sinking through the fabric and I shifted my weight a little in a fruitless attempt to escape the feeling. “He said that I wasn’t answering the question right and that we had to try again after prom.”

  “What was the question?” Eric’s brown eyes held mine in an overly curious way that reminded me of a puppy.

  “The question was who am I?”

  He laughed. “You’re kidding? How can you get that wrong?”

  I shrugged. I couldn’t tell whether he was laughing at the situation or at me. I could feel my body starting to go stiff over the idea that it was at me. “I don’t know.”

  “Well, what did you say?”

  “I just talked about cheerleading and stuff.”

  He nodded. “That makes sense, I guess.” He frowned as if trying to solve a Sudoku layout. “So, what was Sam’s problem?”

  “He said that I was already getting my extra-curricular activities covered in the yearbook elsewhere and that I needed to be more personal.”

  “I guess that makes sense.” He ran his fingers through his sweat-drenched hair and his eyes shifted over to the ramp that led to the locker rooms. “So, what did you say after that?”

  “I just said that I was popular.”

  He snorted. “You’re joking?”

  He was laughing at me. I had no doubt about it and it was making my brain start to go blank. Why did he have to do that? Why did he have to laugh at me? What was so funny, anyway? It was the truth. I was popular.

  “You actually said that?” his eyes widened as he took in my hurt look and realized that I wasn’t joking.

  “I didn’t know what else to say.”

  “You really are one of a kind.” He shook his head slowly, as if I was the puppy. “I’m going to get changed, but if you hang around, we’ll go to the diner or something.”

  I nodded. I didn’t bark and luck for him he didn’t pat me on the head.

  “Okay,” he swooped down and planted a kiss on my cheek. “I’ll be out in a minute.”

  “Take ten if it means you won’t come out smelling like that,” I joked as he started to jog across the field.

  He turned quickly, but didn’t stop moving towards the changing room. “Don’t act like you don’t love it,” he said with a grin, before turning back in the direction that his legs were taking him.

  CHAPTER 3

  Sophie Jackson grew up on the same street as me. We went to the same kindergarten together. And we were arch-enemies.

  It had all started on the very first day that we got there. We were put at the same table with an Indian boy named Rajesh. Rajesh was like nothing we had ever seen before. Both Sophie’s parents and my parents lived on a wealthy, all-white suburban street. I’d never seen anybody of color before close up, and he fascinated me. By lunchtime I was totally convinced that Rajesh and I were destined to spend our lives together.

  This wouldn’t have been a problem if it wasn’t for Sophie. It seemed that Sophie was just as taken with Rajesh as I was. Back then, Sophie had weapons at her disposal that I didn’t have. She had an ocean of fiery curls springing from her head. She had translucent green eyes which sparkled like marbles caught in the sunlight and were framed with thick lashes that curved and fluttered. I’d never really thought about myself as anything less than beautiful, before I had to compare myself to her.

  I had the classical good looks that everybody wished for. I had the ice blonde hair that only got lighter when the sun’s gentle touch had run through it. My eyes were a blueish-green that seemed to differ from day to day, so that the never looked quite the same twice. I was thin, but I was curvy. Even back when I was little you could tell that I was going to age well.

  Unfortunately, though, Rajesh wasn’t interested in the classical beauty. He wanted something wilder and that’s what he got.

&nb
sp; It took me until high school to forgive Sophie Jackson. I guess I’m not really the kind of person who can let go of wrongdoing easily.

  Sophie and I were peas in a pod, though. Our friendship was something that was inevitable. It would have been impossible for us to continue being on the same planet without coming together.

  “Do you like it?” she asked, bouncing over to me when school had finished the next day. She was pushing her impressively large breasts in my direction. A tiny gold chain with a heart shaped pendent was sitting perfectly between her pushed-together boobs.

  “It’s pretty,” I nodded, so she would pull her breasts back from the attack position she currently had them in. “Who got you that?”

  She grinned. “I can’t tell you.”

  “You can’t tell me?” Why would she point it out if she couldn’t tell me who had given it to her? She had clearly wanted me to ask about it.

  She shook her head quickly. I could see a giddy, childish look spreading over her face. She had a secret. She had a secret which was making her act like a lovesick schoolgirl, and she was dragging me into the act. Despite myself, I wanted to know what it was.

  “I can’t tell you,” she repeated. “He made me promise to keep it a secret.”

  “Well, I guess that narrows it down to only the guys.”

  “You don’t know that for sure,” she said, trying to backtrack. “I could have said ‘him’ to throw you off the scent.”

  “You could have done that,” I agreed, and a small rush of relief came over her eyes. “But you didn’t. You’re not that smart.” She looked hurt and anxious over the fact that her secret was already starting to slip away from her.

  “You can be a real bitch sometimes, you know,” she said.

  I grinned. She was too easy. All the fire in her hair stemmed from her stomach and it was just too easy to stoke.

  “I don’t know why I bother with you sometimes,” Sophie said. She wanted me to play her game, not to win it.