“Okay. Send them in. I want to get it over with already.”
Chapter 64: Beckett
Codycomesoutofthe lake house at ten-thirty.
He looks like a man who just put something down that he's been carrying for a long time. Not lighter exactly — you don't get lighter from those kinds of conversations, you just get different. Reorganized. Like the weight shifted from one place to another and the new place makes more sense.
He stops in front of me.
I'm leaning against the hood of my car, where I've been since eight this morning.
"Your turn," Cody says.
I nod.
He gets in my car and puts the seat back. He closes his eyes, and he's asleep in four minutes. I stand there and look at Cody Ravenshaw. The asshole who I helped put in a hospital bed, who I watched fall apart in a waiting room, who stood outside a girl's dorm because he didn't know how to leave her alone.
He's a disaster.
But he loves her.
And because he can sleep right now, I wonder if she loves him back.
If she does, I don’t stand a fucking chance. Do I?
When I open the door, she's at the window that overlooks the lake. She's standing with her back to me, her arms crossed, and her hair down.
She doesn't turn around when she hears the door.
I don't say anything yet. I go to the kitchen and find the coffee. I pour two cups, and I put one on the counter beside her.
She picks it up as I lean against the counter and watch her.
She looks tired.
"Is Cody okay?" she asks, and I’m a bit thrown by the question.
"He’s asleep in my car."
Something moves across her face. Not quite a smile. The ghost of one. "He always could sleep anywhere."
Shit, she still loves him.
"Yeah."
Silence falls around us, and I’m not sure how the fuck to go about this, but what I do know is that the time I had with her wasn’t enough.
"Beck," she says, turning around. She looks at me across the kitchen with those eyes that have always done something to me that I've never fully been able to understand.
"You played me the entire time," she says.
I stay quiet because it’s not the full truth.
"And I felt so much guilt for sleeping with you because you’re Cody’s teammate, but then––" She stops. "I find out it was all an agenda. Was any of it real?”
"Yes.”
She glares at me like it was a rhetorical question.
