“I saw you.”
“When?” he demanded.
“The night of the block party.”
He frowned. “Graduation?”
“Yes.”
“How could you have seen something that never happened, Tate?”
I threw my hands in the air. “You disappeared. Your mom was looking for you, so I offered to find you. I opened your bedroom door to find you ramming your thing into Madison.”
“My thing?”
“Your,” I pointed to his crotch, “Thing.”
He stared at me for several seconds, before he grinned slowly.
“Stop it,” I hissed.
“We’ll put a pin in the thing...” He grimaced and shook his head. “I mean, we’ll loop back to that later.”
I rolled my eyes, and he took my hand.
“What are you doing?” I asked, trying to pull away from him.
He held me tighter. “Look at me.”
I met his eyes with a huff.
“Madison dumped a cup of soda on me, so I went upstairs to clean up. I walked out of my bathroom to find her buck-naked on my bed.”
“What?” I rasped.
He nodded. “I told her to get the fuck out of my room and she responded by yanking the towel off me. What I think you saw was me trying to get it back from her. At no time have I ever rammed my... thing... into Madison Payne. I have a hard and fast rule that I will never disrespect my mother by fucking someone in her home, Tate, you know this. If I was going to break that rule for anyone, it sure as shit wasn’t gonna be Madison Payne.”
I was dying to know who he’d break it for, but I refrained from asking.
“Why didn’t you just ask me what happened with Madison?” he continued.
“I think I was just so stunned.” I had made the decision to tell him how I felt that night, mostly because I knew that whichever way he responded, I’d be able to process his answer away from home. I was leaving for college the next day, so I’d decided to throw caution to the wind. “I mean, I thought I saw you going for someone I would never be able to compete with—”
“Because there is no competition, Tate,” Flash interrupted. “There never was. You’re worlds above her.”
“Well, that’s not entirely true. She’s blonde, curvy, all tits and ass, and wanted by every man who sees her.”
“Not true.”
“Totally true,” I argued.
“I have never wanted Madison.”
“Never?”
“Never,” he confirmed.
“Well, then what the hell’s wrong with you?”
