My head jerks up.“Say what?”
Noah’s eyes stay on mine, calm but sharp.“The shit Jace said.About extra points.”
I shake my head hard.“I never fucking said that.I’d never talk about her like that.Not her.”
He watches me for a moment.“Yeah.I figured.Jace has a mouth built for pissing people off.Shoots it off just to hear himself talk.I nearly flattened him a few months ago when he kept circling Aubrey like she was something to sink his teeth into.”
I let out a laugh.“You should’ve.”
“I might still,” he says.
Another moment of silence lingers between us.
“She’s not gonna believe you, you know,” Noah says eventually.“Not for a while.”
“I know.”The words catch in my throat as they come out.
“And she’s hurting.”
“I am too.”
He looks at me, one brow raised, eyes sharp.“Then do something about it.Get your head straight.She’s not gonna wait forever while you sit here crying into your dick.”
I don’t respond, mostly because he’s right.
He stands and pats me on the shoulder once before walking toward the door.He stops just before stepping outside.
“She cried when she gave Aubrey your stuff,” he says, glancing back at me.“I think that counts for something.”
Next he’s gone.
And I’m left alone again with my thoughts.
Me and the silence, and the ring I keep spinning on my thumb as if it has the power to rewind time.Like maybe if I turn it enough times, it’ll take me back to the night I slipped it into her hand with every intention written across my fucking heartbeat.
The next day doesn’t come any easier.If anything, it drags its boots across my chest and spits in my face for good measure.
Sam doesn’t look at me.Not once.She just walks past me in the hallway as if I’m invisible.No worse than invisible because even air gets breathed.I’m nothing to her now.
I try to talk to her between classes when she’s heading to her locker.I call her name, softly at first, then louder as she keeps walking.
This one time she stopped, and I thought maybe I’d get my chance to fix things.But when she looked at me, her eyes didn’t blaze as they usually did; they were frozen.
“Go to hell,” she says.It’s cold now.Nothing soft remains, as if everything she used to give me—her laugh, her blush, her fucking heart—got locked behind a door I no longer have the key to.
She walks away, and I stay standing there, feeling every eye in the hallway on me.My hands itch.My chest won’t fucking settle.
She’s shut it off.
That light she used to give me?It’s gone.The softness she used to show me when no one else was around?Gone too.The part of her that looked at me as if I was more than just a cocky asshole with a smart mouth that her father thought I was?Well, it’s gone too.
Every second of silence, every cold glance, every clipped word is a debt I racked up and now have to pay.
She’s fire turned ice.
And I’m the reason she froze.
I barely make it through the day without losing my shit.Every class feels longer than the last, and every encounter with her in the hallway hits me like a punch to the ribs.I can’t think.I can’t breathe.I can’t get the look on her face out of my head when she told me to go to hell.
