Dawson’s freckled cheeks stained the lightest pink as I stared wide-eyed at him, almost positive he was a figment of my drug-addled imagination. His brows pinched and his mouth flattened into a line as his gaze swept over me head to toe.
“You look like shit,” he stated.
I just continued to gape at him. I couldn’t fathom why he was here when he’d basically told me I was dead to him. Some tiny flickering hope in the back of my brain said maybe he was there because he still wanted me, that he couldn’t let me go.
“Can I come in?” Dawson asked. The request was soft and shaky and so unlike him that it threw me off guard. I nodded mutely and stepped aside to let him in.
He glanced around the open room anxiously. When he caught sight of the burned down joints on the living room table and the beer bottles scattered about, disappointment and worry lined his features.
“I wanted to come talk to you yesterday, but you…had company,” he finished uncomfortably. Acid bubbled in my stomach at the thought that Dawson most likely assumed I’d been shacking up with someone for two days.
“Anyway, I wanted to come by and maybe clear the air between us if you’re free to talk…or if you want to, that is.”
My heart wrenched behind my ribs as his gaze connected with mine. I didn’t deserve his time or his words, but he was willing to give me both. I wasn’t strong enough to turn him down. It felt like I was on borrowed time with Dawson, so I was going to take every morsel of his attention that I could get.
“Of course I do,” I rushed to accept. “Let’s go sit outside though. I could use some air.”
I snuck his ring onto my finger as I led him out past the pool and to the fire pit close to the tree line. He dropped gracefully into one of the Adirondacks situated around it as I took the one beside him, taking a fortifying breath as I waited for him to speak.
After a couple of minutes of silence, I chanced a look over at him and the agonized expression on his gorgeous face triggered painful spasms in my chest.
“I’ve thought about this a lot the last couple days. I hoped we could hash things out and try to find a way past everything…but I’ve just been so goddamn angry with you.” Dawson’s voice was tight and strained, his knuckles flexing on the armrest next to me.
“Dawson…”
“Why was he here?”
“What?”
He shot me a cold glare and his jaw twitched. “Corvin. His car has been in your driveway since Wednesday morning.”
I squirmed in my seat. “He just came by to talk and apologize after the…incident at the party. But I was kind of having a rough comedown, so he texted a friend of his to come over and hook me up with some stuff.”
Dawson cursed under his breath and ran his fingers through his thick hair. “So you decided to get high and party again noteven twelve hours later? Jesus, did you hook up with him again too?”
Anger suffused my veins at his question, hitting too close to my anxiety from earlier. “No, I fucking didn’t. And you have no right to ask me about who I choose to fuck or not.”
The words hit their intended target as I watched Dawson wince and visibly deflate. He turned his head away from me, but I saw his Adam’s apple bob repeatedly as though struggling to swallow. I immediately regretted my comment, but I was too on edge to take it back.
“Fair enough,” he said roughly. “Contrary to what you might think, I didn’t come over to make you feel like shit. I just wanted to get some answers and see if we could put all this crap behind us.”
That tiny spark of hope flared a bit brighter, but dimmed just as quickly since there was no way I could tell him everything. I knew Dawson better than I knew myself. He wouldn’t be satisfied with a half-truth, yet that was all I could give him.
“I’m so sorr?—”
“Stop,” he demanded sharply. “I don’t want to hear any lame excuses or half-assed apologies. What I want is a reason why.”
“Why what?” I rasped out.
“Fuck, Theo. Where do I even begin?” he snapped. “Why did you screw Corvin in my room? Why did you act like a crude jackass in front of my friends? Why did you not tell me you were moving back? Why did you ignore me for fucking three and a half years? Why did you…leave me?”
The last question left him in a low, broken whisper, and it ripped through my insides. How could I give him the answers when they were all intertwined, stemming from the one problem I couldn’t burden him with?
“Damn it, say something!”
“I don’t fucking know!” I jumped up, pacing agitatedly. “I don’t know why I’m like this! I don’t get why the fuck my brain is wired wrong or why I do the stupidest shit.”
At least that part was the truth. I still don’t know what I’d done wrong in my life to deserve this curse.
