“Stop panicking. According to Gracie, who I spoke to a few days ago, Cole and Lana are all loved up, they’ve probably gone out for the day.”Lies, I’ve just spent the night with her, but whatever.“And Logan might have had some hockey thing he needed to get to and probably just didn’t bother to mention it. You know how he is. I’m sure that if there was something wrong, they would have told us so just calm down a little and try to think rationally.”
“Can you at least try to call them? See if they answer you?”
I don’t bother to tell him that if they don’t answer the phone for him, then they won’t for me, I just nod and do as he asks.
Logan, Harley and I watch silently as Cole follows Lana back to their room, each of us a jumbled mess of confusion and worry. The three of them came back two days ago, with Cole carrying a bleeding and bruised Lana in his arms, each of them looking more than worse for wear.
Turns out that Lana’s life is a lot darker than any one of us knew and that she’d been in danger the whole time, which was the real reason why Cole moved her in with us. They’d been hours away, putting Lana’s demons to rest. I’m pretty sure they gave us a diluted version of the story to save our delicate sensibilities or something because there’s no way that what they told us was the full story.
But none of that matters so long as they’re all safe and okay. Lana is clearly struggling, but at least she has Cole at her beckand call for whatever she needs. I’m sure the guys will agree with me when I suggest her staying here, regardless of her not needing to for her safety anymore.
I’ve come to like Lana, I like the way she can put Cole in his place and how she has a take-no-shit attitude that’s impossible not to respect.
But now isn’t the time to bring up living arrangements.
All we can do right now is be there for them if they need it.
Even though I’m itching to get out of the house and go see my girl. It’s been three days since I’ve set my eyes on her and I’m starting to get twitchy, my mind constantly preoccupied with thoughts of her.
We didn’t tell her that anything happened, knowing that she’d lose her shit and panic, probably going into mother hen mode and stressing herself out. We’ve texted here and there… kind of.
I’ve been texting to make sure her stalker hasn’t been around, and she’s been replying with one word answers, clearly still feeling awkward about the other morning.
No matter, it won’t be long until she knows the truth.
I’m moving the timeline up. I can’t keep doing this, I can’t keep pretending to be two people when all I want is her.
But first, there’s something I want to do with her.
There’s one last game we need to play before she learns the truth.
I have a plan.
TWENTY-NINE
GRACIE
This plan sucks.
I really, really,reallyhope that Noah knows what he’s doing.
I’d avoided him for a couple of days following the… incident, trying to gear myself up to tell him what happened that morning.
I’ve come to terms with a lot of things over the last few days while sitting in my dorm room alone and trying to figure things out. The first thing I figured out was that even though my masked stranger terrifies the fuck out of me, a part of me loves that he does.
I’ve always been drawn to things I shouldn’t be, and he’s a perfect example of that.
In a different world, I can see his plans for our future actually working out. When I look back at the time we’ve spent together, he’s never once done anything that I didn’t actually want him to do. He’s also kind of taken care of me, in his own twisted way.
I’m not saying that to excuse his behavior, because what he’s been doing is wrong on so many levels, but I guess I’m just as messed up in the head as he is.
Another thing that I figured out is that I kind of like Noah—okay, there’s nokind ofabout it—and not in a he’s-my-brothers-best-friend-and-also-becoming-one-of-mine way and in a more of a… Ilikehim way, which to me feels even more of a violation than what the masked guy has been doing to meandwhat I did to him the other morning.
Noah has never once even looked at me in that way, and he would never go there. I guess I’ve finally bought into the whole crushing on my brother’s best friend thing.
He’s just so kind, and so damn sweet that it makes my heart ache. He takes care of me, actually listens to what I have to say and is genuinely interested in whatever I have to talk about. I’m used to people wanting to know me for the persona I put out into the world, but Noah isn’t like that.
He's a lot like me, I’ve learned recently. I always saw him as the caretaker of my brother's group—and he is—but he’s also so much more than that.
