I sat back with a sigh, closing my eyes like a fucking coward because I couldn’t face him.
What would Ward think of me now? Now that he’d seen the world I’d run away from home to be a part of? He hadn’t even seen the ugliest part of it, or the ugliest people.
Matt was average at worst. Sure, he’d hurt me, but to most people he was just kind of an asshole.
Ward was thousands of times better than he was, and now…
“So he was really your ex, huh?” Ward asked.
I groaned, pressing the back of my head further into the headrest and screwing my eyes shut tighter.
I didn’t want to talk about this—at all, ever, with anyone—but I owed Ward, didn’t I?
He’d nearly floored the guy over me. An explanation was the least I could do.
“Ex feels like giving it too much weight,” I said, but then that felt like a lie. “Or I mean… I dunno. From my perspective maybe it isn’t. From his, though…”
Ward’s fingers tightened around my knee.
“Allison told me you were working on a movie together,” Ward prodded.
I laughed. He really did make friends wherever he went.
“We were. It never got made—”
“Because he walked off, yeah, she said,” Ward finished for me.
Now, I looked at him. Maybe I did want to talk about this. Maybe if I told Ward it’d stop hurting so much.
“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, he… walked away from the movie, and me. And I think… I think he took that other offer because he wanted to get away from me because I was… I dunno. Not enough. Not… ambitious enough, maybe, or… terrible in bed?”
Ward blinked at me.
I shrugged. Matt had never given me a reason, so I’d been left to come up with my own.
“Did he say that to you?” Ward asked.
“Not in so many words,” I said. “Why?”
“Thinking about going back and kicking his ass,” Ward said.
“I’ve never seen you get mad at someone before,” I said, toying with Ward’s index finger, still curled around my knee. “Not ever.”
Ward squeezed my knee tight again. “The only person I’ve ever been that mad at before was your dad,” he said.
“My dad?”
“Yeah,” Ward confirmed, pausing to swallow. “Yeah, because he hurt you.”
I wanted to kiss him. I wanted to pull him right over in the back of the cab, with no reason or excuse, and crush our mouths together. Without anyone seeing it.
I didn’t do it, but I wanted to.
“Don’t like seeing you hurt,” Ward mumbled after a few heartbeats.
“I don’t like seeing you hurt, either. I’m sorry about tonight.”
If I could’ve taken all this back, I would have. Ward was better off without me back in his life. Like always, all I’d managed to do was make it harder.
