Total pages in book: 185
Estimated words: 191421 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 957(@200wpm)___ 766(@250wpm)___ 638(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 191421 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 957(@200wpm)___ 766(@250wpm)___ 638(@300wpm)
In the restroom, which is thankfully and surprisingly empty, I look myself in the mirror. I pat my hair. I wash my hands.
“He’s looking at you,” I tell myself. “Maybe he misses you. Maybe he missed you like you’ve missed him and maybe…”
No, I’m not going there. I’m not thinking about getting back together with him.
Not right now.
Not ever even.
This isn’t about that.
I’m just happy that I may have a chance to apologize to him. I can’t possibly hope for anything else, anything more. Not after what I did.
I smile at myself in the mirror.
Then with another deep breath, I turn around and walk out, hoping to find him standing outside.
But instead, I find someone else.
Someone who makes me come to a screeching, jarring halt. As if I’ve run into a wall.
An obstacle, a hurdle.
A problem.
And I have, haven’t I?
Because who I find outside the restroom is the very last person I’d hoped to find.
In fact, I wish that I’d never run into him.
I wish that I’d never set my eyes on him in the first place.
On Reign Davidson.
My ex-boyfriend’s best friend.
CHAPTER NINE
You’re a slut.
That’s what he said to me. The very last time we talked.
His exact words were: “Maybe it’s a good thing you said no to him. Because I think he’s better off without you after all. He’s better off without the hungry fucking slut who pounced on the guy she claims to hate. Stay the fuck away from him. And me.”
I went to him, see. For help.
After everything happened, Lucas wouldn’t pick up my calls so like an idiot, I called him up as my last resort. I wanted us to go together to Lucas so we could explain that it meant nothing, that our stupid kiss meant nothing. It was a mistake — a horrible, horrendous, grave, awful mistake — and that I’d do anything to make up for it.
But he rejected the idea. He refused to help me.
He refused to lift even a finger to help me.
And why would he? He never wanted us to get together in the first place. In fact, I bet he must’ve used this opportunity to put even a greater wedge between me and Lucas.
So yeah, I called him to ask for help and he kicked me when I was already so down.
And here he is again.
Looking at me. Staring at me.
And my heart is beating right now like it used to beat back then. My body is shaking the way it used to back then as well. My skin is trembling.
“Nice dress,” he drawls, his eyes going up and down my body.
And I have to press my back up against the wall.
Not only at his voice — that two years later sounds so much deeper and rougher, more sanded down, as if he barely uses it — but also because of what he just said.
What he always says. What he always notices.
When he sees me.
My dress.
It feels like no time has passed at all. It feels like I saw him only yesterday. That only yesterday, I turned sixteen and he climbed through my window. Only yesterday, he had me trapped between my bedpost and himself.
And I made the biggest mistake of my life and I lost everything.
No.
No, no, no.
I don’t want to think about that. I don’t want to think about that night or anything else that came before.
So I shut those thoughts down and thank God that I’m not wearing pink.
With my heart a pulpy mess in my chest, I ask, “What do you want?”
Leaning against the opposite wall, he stands all casually, his hands in his pockets, taking stock of me. At my question, his eyes come back to my face. “It’s pretty.”
Of course he completely ignores my question.
Because when has he ever cared about what I want?
“Why are you here?” I try again.
“Blue suits you,” he murmurs, determined to not answer me.
As opposed to what, pink?
I almost say it.
Almost.
But thankfully, I pull myself back from it. I don’t want to engage him. I don’t want to go down memory lane with him. As if we’re old friends, sharing some kind of an inside joke.
We’re not friends.
We never were and we never will be.
Not to mention, I don’t have time to do this with him.
I need to get back to the people who actually are my friends. His friends too by the way.
His best friend.
I need to get back to his best friend and do what I came here to do.
“What do you want?” I ask again, this time with a more severe voice.
Hoping that it might get through to him.
But of course not.
Cocking his head to the side, he replies, kinda amused, kinda not, “I want you to say thank you.”
“What?”
“It was a compliment.”
“Yeah, right,” I scoff, unable to help myself.
He frowns slightly. “What, you don’t think so?”