“I…”
“You’re…”
“Jesus, just spit it out.”
“You’re an idiot! I used to think you were a puzzle, but I’ve got you figured out, and I should have from the first time I met you. You’re selfish, heartless, a dickhead. And you’re an awful person for pretending nothing happened between us. You take advantage of people without thinking about how you might hurt them; you pretend your little games don’t have consequences. You don’t care about anyone or anything, just yourself. You use people. And you’re cruel.”
“Harper…”
I couldn’t stop myself. “You used me. You were mean to me. And it hurt, because I thought I mattered to you. There was a time when I really believed that. Then you threw me aside like I was a wadded-up napkin. You pushed me out of that room and out of your life, and you didn’t even blink. You hurt me, and I’ll never forgive you. Never. Understand?”
My words were ruthless and bitter, and they remained floating in the air around us after I’d said them. Trey was frustrated. I could tellthere was a storm brewing inside him, and feelings I couldn’t really guess at. He seemed to have been looking back in time, and suddenly, he understood.
“Are you talking about that morning in the dorm room where I was living with Hoyt? About when I asked you to leave?” His voice was thin, surprised. And I didn’t like it one bit.
“You didn’t ask, you yelled at me to get out!”
“That’s why you’re acting this way with me?”
I didn’t reply. I just scowled. He brought his hands to his head and sat on the bottom step, looking humiliated and incredulous. “That’s why you’ve been treating me like a cockroach?”
“You are a cockroach.”
“My God, Harper, of course I told you to go. I had woken up with the worst hangover in human history, and the first thing I saw was you standing there naked in my room. I was out of it. All I could think about was Hoyt tearing my head off if he found you there. Try to understand that. You’re his little sister!”
I couldn’t stand to hear another word. I turned around, but he stopped me.
“You were just a girl! I shouldn’t even have been looking at you! I’m sorry if I was curt or if I said something rude. I wasn’t thinking; I just reacted. But you have to understand that I couldn’t let your brother find us like that. I can’t imagine what he would have thought.”
I tried to get past him, and again, he stopped me. I could see the tension in his shoulders and the doubts in his face. I laughed sarcastically, hoping it would keep me from crying and giving my feelings away. “So that’s your justification? There were a thousand different ways you could have let me know, and you picked the absolute worst one because that’s what was easiest for you. At no moment did you think of me.” My legs started shaking. “If we’d gotten caught, I–I… Look, I’d never have let Hoyt figure out what had happened betweenus. Never. But you didn’t care what I felt. What we did simply didn’t matter to you.”
Trey blinked, confused. “What we did?”
“It meant so much to me, and you throwing me out after what we shared was humiliating, absolutely humiliating. It destroyed me.”
“Wait a minute. Did you say something about Hoyt catching us? And what do you mean bywhat we did? We didn’tdoanything, Harper.”
I wrapped my arms around myself to keep from falling apart. My feelings and I needed some space. “I know. I know it was nothing to you. But to me, it was. It mattered. And you broke my heart.”
I saw a muscle twitching in his neck. “Harper, what the hell are you talking about?”
“Trey, are you fucking with me?”
“No!”
“Are you really implying that you don’t remember?”
“Remember what?”
“I can’t believe you’re such a bastard that you’d pretend. You’re an adult. An adult is someone who takes responsibility for their actions. It won’t kill you to admit you acted like a dog. I’m over it now anyway.”
At last, I managed to make my way into the stairwell.
“Harper, I swear on my life I don’t know what you’re talking about. All I remember is getting up that morning. I don’t know how else to tell you that.”
The despair in his voice was so intense that it made me pause. I turned around to look him in the face. He was about to cry. And I felt even more apprehensive than before.
“Please,” he said, “you’re starting to scare me. What happened between us?”
