I swallow hard, but my throat feels tight. “Yeah,” I answer as if I know, but I don’t know. I don’t know anything. Not anymore.
Her tongue grazes her lip where my thumb had just traced, and it sends another sharp pulse through me, prickling every inch of my skin. It’s a foreign feeling, one I don’t know how to name, but it’s addictively satisfying.
A silent moment passes before she looks away. She starts walking again, and I ignore the desire to pull her into me as I follow closely beside her. We don’t say anything for several steps, cooling in the come down of whatever it was that just happened. When she finally breaks the silence, I’m immediately brought back to reality.
“Did you hook up with Macey Bromwell?”
“What?” My stomach curls inside itself. The question catches me so off guard, it nearly gives me whiplash.
“It’s none of my business.” She shrugs. “I’m just asking. I heard Nate ask if whatever he’s doing with her is okay with you, so it made me wonder. You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”
Idon’twant to.
I don’t want to discuss the mistakes I’ve made or the emptiness I’ve tried to fill. I don’t want her to see those parts of me, but in the same breath, I can’t bring myself to lie to her. And for a second, I hate that just as much.
“Yes,” I admit.
“Yes, you don’t want to answer, or yes, you hooked up with her?”
I take a deep breath, stopping again to look at her directly. She turns to face me, and the sickness that hits my gut when her eyes land on mine is revolting.
I don’t want to tell her about the drunken one-night stand I disgustingly participated in with the campus jump-off. I know she’s not the kind of person to judge, but it was an act that was out of character for me, and although I feel like I’ve known this woman my whole life, I also know the reality is that we’re very much still getting to know each other. And, God help me, I want her to know me—the good parts I used to believe in and the parts she makes me believe could still matter. But looking at her right now… I could never be anything but honest. Even if it means I’m digging my own grave.
“Yes, I hooked up with her.”
Disappointment coats her expression, and I instantly want to take my words back. I want to scoop them up out of the air and force them back down my throat. More than that, I want to go back in time and take the entire night back. Just hit a full rewind and erase any record of it at all.
“It wasn’t a good choice,” I start, but she cuts me off.
“You don’t have to explain,” she says. “It’s really none of my business.” She pauses a moment before she continues. “I mean, everyone hooks up with Macey, anyway, so…yeah, I get it.”
A strange aching need to apologize to her begins to rise in my throat. It’s odd because I obviously didn’t know Alana when this situation occurred, nor should it be something that would affect her in the least, but I can’t shake the feeling that I’ve let her down. Once again, I hate it.
“Is she…a friend of yours?” I ask awkwardly.
“Oh, God, no,” she scoffs. “I actually loathe her on account of her being a royal bitch to me our entire first year at UT—all because our performing arts professorcomplimented my‘effortless grace’while telling her she could use my help, but whatever.”
“Yeah,” I breathe. “That sounds like her. I’m sorry she wasn’t nice to you.”
All she says is, “Are you?”
“Am I…?”
“Friends with Macey?”
“Oh. No, we just…happened to cross paths a few unfortunate times.”
“Unfortunate, huh?”
“Like I said,” I repeat. “It wasn’t a good choice.”
Alana nods in understanding. “Well, I can’t say I’m surprised. I think she’s single-handedly working her way through every hot guy on campus before graduation. It must be, like, a goal of hers or something. Maybe she takes a picture of you naked and keeps it as a trophy for her shrine of hotties.”
A chuckle escapes me. “Herwhat?!”
“What?” she asks through a defensive smile. “I’d have one.”
My brows cock up. “You’d have ashrine of hotties?”
