I get it, darlin’. I want you. But this is a loaded gun we’re playing with here, and I’m scared someone is gonna get hurt.
“I know what you’re asking.” I carefully tuck her hair behind her ear, resisting the urge to trace the outline of her lips with my thumb. “And no, friends don’t usually talk like this. But you and me—this friendship is important. It’s special. We can’t risk that, yeah, by letting things get messy?”
She nods, blinking before looking away. “Yeah.”
It’s all I can do not to grimace. “Please don’t do that.”
“Don’t do what?”
“Retreat. Pull away.”I’m sorry I pulled away over all those years. I’m sorry I’m doing it again now.“Tonight—it’s meant a lot to me, and I?—”
“You can’t. My brother, our families…” She offers me a tight smile. “I understand.”
“It’s always the right call, you know. To put yourself out there.”
“Why aren’t you doing it, then?”
The question haunts me all the way home, Billie and me riding in her car in tense, heavy silence.
CHAPTER 12
Rent Free
BILLIE
Run.Faster.
You gotta speed up or you’re gonna be burned alive.
Glancing over my shoulder, I see the flames licking my heels. I pump my legs harder, the burn in my thighs mirrored by the one in my lungs.
I’m running so fast I can’t catch my breath. I open my mouth to take in more air, but suddenly thereisno air. There’s only the fire, the heat, and the horrible cramping in my chest as my need for oxygen becomes acute.
I can’t keep running.
I also can’t stop.
My knees buckle. I fall, my stomach pitching as the burning pavement rises up to meet me. I brace for impact?—
I’m yanked from the dream—nightmare—by the sound of rain pummeling the tin roof of my apartment.
No fire, then. Just a storm.
I’m soaked in sweat. My heart is racing.
These fucking nightmares just won’t quit. Like I’m not having enough trouble sleeping after Ryder unceremoniously said he didn’t feel the same after I bared my heart to him. NowI have horrible dreams about being trapped in a postapocalyptic hellscape.
Fun times.
I lie awake, body aching, until the thin gray light of dawn peeks through the shutters above my bed.
Then I get up and go to work, feeling more dead than alive.
My cell phone pings on the desk beside my computer.
My stomach drops the way it does every time I’ve gotten a text over the past seven days. It’s been exactly one week since Ryder turned me down that night by the bonfire, but like the lovesick idiot I am, I still hold out hope that he’ll text me—call me—and confess that he was lying, that he was scared of hurting me or my brother or whoever, and ask me out on a proper date.
Because that’s not pathetic or anything, continuing to pine after a guy who unequivocally shot you down.
