I nod, knowing it's true. "I guess I have higher standards. I just grew up thinking sex was special andnotcasual at all. Sure, there were guys and girls who screwed around a lot—my best friend Phillip was one of them. He was a total manwhore."
"There you go. Besides, you can't fault Sebastian for having sex. You had a boyfriend until last night—even ifhetreated you better than my brother did. Sebastian has been treating you like his girlfriend," Lex smirks.
"Just not with sex."
"Oh, he'd sex the hell out of you if you gave him the go ahead, but he respects you and respected your relationship with Cam—as fucked up as it was." She sits down in the chair across from the sofa. "You know, we should have known it would go south."
"How do you figure?" This should be interesting.
"Well, Cam bullied you in high school to make himself feel better. I think he switched it up a bit and this timedatedyou to make himself feel better—youmade him feel better in both cases."
"And neither of them ended well," I mutter.
There's a quick knock on the door and Bash walks in. I can't deny I'm happy to see him or hold back the smile. Guilt. It filters through me and I ignore it, shoving it aside to deal with later.
"There's my girl," Bash announces by way of greeting.
"You really shouldn't call me that in front of Liv. She'll get jealous," Alexa teases with a wink.
Bash smirks, walking over to me and kissing me on top of my head. "You ready to go see the doctor?"
I huff gently, so I don't jar my ribs. "No. I don't want to go anywhere looking like this."
"You look beautiful," he tells me.
I roll my eyes. "Liar. I'm bruised and scraped up. My nose is swollen with a brace on it. My eyes are black and blue and still puffy. Yeah, nothing beautiful here."
"Olivia?" Lex begins.
"Yeah?"
"Youarebeautiful. You're alive. You survived and you're here right now breathing, laughing, and talking to us. That's a beauty of its own," she says softly, ending with a sniffle.
"Well…" is all I can think to say. "Thank you."
She nods and heads to her room, turning back at the last minute to say, "Don't forget your umbrella. It's raining like crazy."
"Rain, rain, rain. All it ever does here is rain. I thought you said it snowed here," I say to Bash.
"The weather is unseasonably warm right now. Take it while you can get it. One inch of rain is a foot of snow. Think about that a while," he taunts.
"When you put it like that…"
He chuckles.
"C'mon." He holds up my jacket for me to ease into and zips it up.
I grab my umbrella and he rolls his eyes. I flip him off and he just laughs.
eleven
The doctor's appointmentthree days ago went as expected. Apparently my lungs are doing well, even if it hurt like a mother to breathe deep like that. No blood in my urine—all good.
It's time to see Dr. Wheeler. Bash drops me off. "I'll pick you up in an hour."
"Thanks," I say, then kiss his cheek before exiting the car.
As I walk into the building I think about what I just did. It was natural to kiss his cheek—even though I wanted to kiss his lips. I've always, from the day I met him, found him extremely attractive and it's no different now—except that I know him. I know he's not someone who'd ever hurt me, but do I want to risk our friendship because of it?
