Not just not enough.
It’s her. It’s always been her.
The words keep replaying, steady as the rain.
I make it halfway across the quad before the boot slips on the wet stone and pain jolts up my leg hard enough to make me gasp. I catch myself on the iron railing beside the path and stand there shaking, rain pouring off my hair, tears mixing with it so fully now there’s no point pretending which is which.
“Shit,” I whisper.
Then, from somewhere behind me—“Fuck, Texas.”
The voice hits low and rough through the rain.
“Baby girl?”
I turn.
Drew is barreling across the quad toward me through the downpour like weather doesn’t apply to him.
Of course he’s still in one of those stupid cut-off hoodies, the fabric plastered dark to his chest and shoulders, his hair dripping, broad arms bare and slick with rain. The sleeves are hacked off so unevenly they look like he got angry at them in a parking lot and finished the job with his teeth.
He takes one look at me and his whole face changes.
No grin.
No swagger.
No football-boy line.
Just alarm.
Then anger.
Then something heavier.
“Jesus Christ.”
I try to straighten.
Try to pull myself back together enough to say something with teeth in it.
What comes out instead is, “Go away.”
He ignores that completely.
Of course he does.
He’s in front of me in three long strides, one hand already steadying my elbow before I can sway again.
“No.”
The word is immediate.
Absolute.
I try to pull away.
It’s weak.
