*~*Love Note: Nico to Reagan – The Hard Count by Ginger Scott*~*

Nico Medina’s world is eleven miles away from mine. During the day, it’s a place where doors are open—where homes are lived in, and neighbors love. But when the sun sets, it becomes a place where young boys are afraid, where eyes watch from idling cars that hide in the shadows and wicked smoke flows from pipes.

West End is the kind of place that people survive. It buries them—one at a time, one way or another. And when Nico was a little boy, his mom always told him to run.

I’m Reagan Prescott—coach’s daughter, sister to the prodigal son, daughter in the perfect family.
Life on top.
Lies.
My world is the ugly one. Private school politics and one of the best high school football programs in the country can break even the toughest souls. Our darkness plays out in whispers and rumors, and money and status trump all. I would know—I’ve watched it kill my family slowly, strangling us for years.

In our twisted world, a boy from West End is the only shining light.
Quarterback.
Hero.
Heart.
Good.
I hated him before I needed him.
I fell for him fast.
I loved him when it was almost too late.

When two ugly worlds collide, even the strongest fall. But my world…it hasn’t met the boy from West End.

(Written on the last page of Reagan Prescott’s yearbook from Nico Medina)

Reagan,

I read all of these notes from our classmates in your yearbook and I had to laugh. I wonder how many times, years from now, you’ll crack this thing open and look back fondly on Travis’s very profound “Don’t party too hard!” or Allie Colson’s epic entry: “Reagan, you always seemed so sweet. I wish we had known each other better.”

I don’t want this page to be one that’s easily forgotten. I don’t want you to look back on it and barely feel everything that I know we both feel right now. I want this page to be permanent. I want to be permanent.

You and I spent so many years trying to prove how wrong the other one was. I hate to admit this, or even put it in writing, but there were many times you were in fact…right. I argued anyway, because that’s us, isn’t it? But here, in this permanent page, bound by a permanent memory, from my heart, I would like to tell you about all of the times you weren’t wrong.

You weren’t wrong the day you sat there on the grass to watch me and my friends play a game of football in the dark. And you weren’t wrong to know deep down how badly I wanted someone—anyone—to see me, to think I could be something more, or to ask me if I wanted to be. You weren’t wrong to call me a coward when I was, and you weren’t wrong to convince me I was special. You weren’t wrong to believe in me, or wrong to trust me with your secrets, or to let me into your home and heart. You weren’t wrong to fall, and you weren’t wrong to let me love you so much that I feel it like a brand on the center of my chest whenever I lie awake and think of you. You weren’t wrong about your dreams, and knowing that you’ll be someone amazing. You weren’t wrong at all.

You, Reagan Marie Prescott, are the most right thing I’ve ever known.

Love,

Nico

P.S.

Have a great summer 😉