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236 pages, Hardcover
First published January 2, 2012
After all, it’s one thing to run away when someone’s chasing you. It’s entirely another to be running all alone.As something of a sceptic (well, okay, a romantic trapped in the body of a realist masquerading as a cynic), the title alone was enough to tell me that this book would be fighting an uphill battle with me. While I like the quirk factor of the phrase ”The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight”, I’ll admit that there’s a part of me that reads that line and scoffs. Zero. There is zero probability. I don’t believe in love at first sight.
To her surprise, he lowers his face so it's level with hers, then narrows his eyes and touches a finger lightly to her cheek. 'Eyelash,' he says, rubbing his thumb to get rid of it. 'What about my wish?' 'I made it for you,' he says with a smile so crooked it makes her heart dip. Is it possible she's only known him for ten hours?
For a long time they just stay there like that, as still as the statues in the garden. And when he gives her no sign - no gesture of welcome, no indication of need - Hadley swallows hard and comes to a decision. But just as she turns to walk away, she hears him behind her, the word like the opening of some door, like an ending and a beginning, like a wish. 'Wait,' he says, and so she does.
He looks at her and smiles. 'You're sort of dangerous, you know?' She stares at him. 'Me?' 'Yeah,' he says, sitting back. 'I'm way too honest with with you.'
The rain begins to fall as they stand there, a sideways drizzle that settles over them lightly. When she lifts her chin again, Hadley sees a drop land on top of Oliver's forehead and then slip down to the end of his nose, and without thinking, she moves her hand from his shoulders to wipe it away.
She shifts from one foot to the other, her heels sinking into the soft dirt. 'I should go,' she says, but her eyes say I'm trying, and her hands, trembling in an effort not to reach out, say Please. 'Right,' he says. 'Me too.' Neither of them moves, and Hadley realises she's holding her breath. Ask me to stay.
As he turns to cross the garden, Hadley's stomach churns. She closes her eyes against the flood of words that never reached her, all those things left unsaid. And when she opens them again, he's gone.
But now, standing here in the basement of a church with shaking hands and a hammering heart, she's struck by what this day actually means, by all that she'll lose and gain with it, by how much has already changed. And something inside her begins to hurt.