I hear him sigh. “I don’t think you did anything, Jude. At least not on purpose.”
Okay. I definitely wasn’t expecting that. I move my arm and open my eyes, looking over to find him sitting on his bed with his back against the headboard. He’s looking over at me, his face soft with concern, not the hard lines of judgment I would expect. Because it’s how he usually looks at me when the topic is women. I’m so stunned I don’t know what to do or say.
“So what happened?” he prompts.
“She found out about Tessa,” I confess and sit up. “That we used to date.”
Levi swallows and looks uncomfortable. “You didn’t tell her about all that?”
I huff out a frustrated breath and run a hand through my hair. “No. I couldn’t figure out how to say, ‘Hey, I cheated on my last girlfriend, you know that nice girl you like so much, but it all ended up working out because she was in love with my best friend anyway.’”
I move off the bed and grab my shirt off the floor, and Levi swears under his breath. “Jesus, Jude, you have a way of twisting the fuck out of everything.”
“Whatever. Honestly, I don’t care about what happened with you two. I’m actually truly happy for you,” I reply, pulling my shirt back on. “Yeah, the situation could have been better, but I now know what you always did. I never loved her.”
“But you love Zoey,” he finishes for me. I drop down onto the corner of the bed and nod. “I think she loves you too.”
“She did. Or she thought she did, and it made her feel bad,” I mutter, trying hard not to completely lose it. “I didn’t tell her about Tessa, which maybe she could have forgiven, but I kind of freaked out last night after sex. And maybe she could have forgiven that too, but then she saw a video Rollins made in Toronto this summer, and she saw a message from Kina on my phone and…”
I pause because my voice seems to have disappeared. I swallow hard and heave a heavy sigh of regret. “Fuck, Levi, even I would run after that.”
“Whoa, whoa. Slow down,” Levi says and leans forward. “What video? And who is Kina? And why would you, of all people, freak out about sex?”
“I don’t want to talk about it, okay?” I bark and stand up.
“No,” he barks back. “If you’re going to start raging on teammates, I have to know why. So I can fucking fix it.”
“It’s not your problem to fix. What are you going to do, date her too?”
I’m so full of pain that I can’t help but inflict it on others. It oozes out of me like pusfrom a wound. God, I fucking hate myself. Levi’s face freezes and then hardens. “For the rest of my fucking life I will regret how I handled things with you when it comes to Tess. I was a coward and an asshole and you didn’t deserve it. You don’t have to keep reminding me.”
I turn away from the door and walk back over to my bed. God, what I would do to be anywhere else right now. Levi rubs the back of his neck, staring at the carpet between us. I know I have to stop punishing him. I know he’s telling the truth. And I know that in the end, no matter what kind of fucked-up rocky road we took to get here, Tessa, Levi and I are all exactly where we should be.
“I’m sorry. That was shitty,” I say quietly, and then I swallow down my belligerent pride and tell him what he needs to know. “Zoey and I didn’t use a condom last night.”
His head darts up. He’s got the best poker face of any person I’ve ever met. Nothing shocks him, or at least he never shows it—until now. He looks downright flabbergasted. This would be hysterical if I weren’t destroyed. “You? Unprotected? You own a crate of condoms.”
“Yeah, but we got carried away.” I sigh and lean forward with my elbows on my knees. “It’s no big deal.”
“It’s one of the biggest deals, Jude,” Levi remarks, eyes still wide.
I laugh. “I know. But it didn’t feel like a big deal. It felt right.”
His expression has changed from stunned to baffled. I really should be enjoying this. “She’s on the pill, right?”
“Nope. And I knew that,” I explain, and his eyes grow wide again. “Yeah, that’s still not why I freaked out. I thought, what’s the worst that happens? She gets pregnant? I can’t see myself with anyone else ever again anyway, so…I can deal with that. That’s honestly what ran through my head.”
“That’s…”
Now he’s speechless. The guy who has an answer to everything. Seriously, I wish I could enjoy this. “Insane? Stupid? Ridiculous?”
“Unexpected,” he replies.
I smile at that, but it makes my chest hurt. “I’m different with her. She makes everything different. I mean, she did.”
He rubs his jaw, scratching at the stubble there, and sits back down on his bed. “So let me get this straight. You had sex with her and freaked out because you weren’t freaked out, and left? And then she found out about Tessa and some video Rollins made? So all of that made her break up with you?”
I nod, closing my eyes and pushing my palms into my eyes. “The video was me being a drunken ass. I was talking about you and Tessa.”
