Me: If anyone asks, I spent the night at Alana’s.
Sloane: Guess that anyone refers to Isaac.
Me: Yeah
Sage: Got it.I’ll threaten Nate with his life.
Sloane: Same with Owen.
Alana: Noted.But if it means anything, Miles was just trying to help.
Ugh, Alana’s response.Miles is always just trying to help.He’s like that—sweet and kind, but with a tinge of bad boy in there when he’s on stage with a guitar.
“Where are you?”Isaac now asks, annoyance lining his voice.
I drop a pin for my location, letting him see I am, in fact, at Alana’s as my tires toss up gravel while my old Jeep spins its wheels.
“On my way home.Just sent you my location.Wanna meet up for breakfast?”My words are calm, but inside my heart is racing, waiting for him to see through my lie.
“Not today,” he replies with zero inflection in his tone.“I gotta go.”
And with that, he hangs up, and guilt pools in my chest, that stupid fucking ache that is always present, ramping up a few notches.
I’ll spend the rest of today chasing my thoughts with guilt, something Isaac knows, and something he thrives on.
It’s toxic as fuck, and I know it, but I can’t seem to walk away.
As I drive to my mom’s house, a place I don’t want to live, but finding a place on this island is nearly impossible, my thoughts are a fucking mess.
The sound of the ocean fills the car, the windows down, the top off, as the sun beats down on me, singeing my skin with its rays.
The burn of its heat is nothing compared to the way my heart feels, broken and aching, needing to find a way to heal.
But healing just doesn’t seem to come.
I hearDaisy sneak out of the house from where I’m sleeping on the couch, and while I’m not surprised she’s leaving like this, a huge part of me wishes she could’ve just stayed.That maybe I could’ve woken up first so she couldn’t sneak out of here like her being here is some dirty little secret.
Maybe it is.I wouldn’t know because I have no idea what the status of her relationship with that fucking asshole is.I don’t talk to the guy anymore, and I am sure as shit not interested in discussing any aspect of how my former friend stole my girlfriend with anyone.
And that’s exactly what he did.The second I left for the mainland too, with the band he wished he was still a part of.I have no doubt he did it out of spite, angry and jealous that he was no longer part of something that looked like it was going to be huge.
So he went after the one thing he knew would get to me.
Daisy.
And not only did he get my girl, the band imploded and all of that fell apart anyway.It was almost like he won twice.Like he fucked me over both ways.
And I lost big time because I didn’t even realize Daze and I had broken up in the first place.I mean, I was always coming back, and she knew that, and even though we did get into this weird argument right before I left, I didn’t think we’d actually broken up.
I thought I was still coming home to her.
The front door opens, and my older brother strolls in, an easy smile on his face, just like always.He kicks off his flip-flops before he sees me lying on the couch.
“Bro, you pass out on the couch or something?”he asks, walking through to the kitchen.
I exhale, heaving myself off the couch as I stand and follow him.“No,” I reply, opening the fridge.
Kai moves in to stand beside me, the two of us in front of the open fridge as we stare at the contents.It used to drive our mom crazy when we did this back when we lived at home, and she’d always tell us to decide what we wanted from the fridge before we opened it.Of course, Kai would always tell her we didn’t know what was in the fridge until we opened it.
