Page 295 of Mad Girl

“There’s always a new guy.”

“Are you jealous?”

“Of Tinsley’s new guy? No. But I don’t need to hear about all the hot sex she’s having, either.”

“She’s your friend, Elliot. She likes to tell you things.”

“Yeah, but when she tells me this stuff, it makes me feel like I’ll never be…” My throat closed around that final word, making it impossible to say.

“Never be what?”

Normal.

“I’m hungry,” I said. “Why don’t we go downstairs?”

“Hey,” you said softly, stroking my braid. “Don’t change the subject. Talk to me.”

“I’m not like Tinsley, okay? She’s so confident with who she is and what she wants that she can give herself to another person so easily.”

“And you can’t?”

“If I could, Casey, I wouldn’t still be a virgin.”

My admission halted our conversation in its tracks. You leaned back. “A virgin? You and Willoughby never…?”

“No.”

“Then what were you in here doing with him for three whole months? Actually, don’t”—a grimace—“don’t answer that.” You shook the thought away, then searched my gaze. “I wish you’d told me.”

“Why? So I could be subjected to the way you’re looking at me right now?”

Something soft burned behind your gaze, making my heart flutter when I wanted it to remain perfectly still. “How am I looking at you?” you asked quietly.

“Like you can’t believe how innocent I am.”

“I’m not thinking that. I’m wondering why you’re so insecure about this.” You brushed my cheek with your thumb, a touch so tender my stupid heart leapt to my throat. And I didn’t like that, either—the ease with which you tugged all my vulnerabilities to the surface.

I shoved your hand down. “You wonder why my lack of experience…would make me insecure…around you.”

You pulled a face. “Do you think I really give a shit how inexperienced you are? Do you think that matters to me at all?”

“It matters to me.”

“Why? Tell me what you’re afraid of, and I’ll tell you why you don’t need to be.”

I looked away.

“See,” you said, ducking to meet my gaze. “You hide from me, too. You shut me out.”

“Yeah, I have a sharing problem, but you have a staying problem. You don’t see how that makes confiding in you a little scary? When you learned what I’d done to Libby’s campaign signs, you left me to wonder where we stood for weeks. I can’t do that again.”

What I didn’t say was: I never should’ve agreed to be with you in the first place. It wasn’t the dark things I might ask you for when the shadows descended just right. It was all the other problematic things I hadn’t told you yet—the truth about me and Michael, for instance—that gnawed especially hard at my conscience. When I finally gathered the courage to tell you about our history, would you walk away from me forever?

“I’m done, okay?” you said wretchedly. “Done hiding and evading and pushing you away. I’m done.”

“Until I slip off my pedestal again, right?”

“Next time you go after someone—if you go after someone, and I really hope you don’t—I’ll be here. I won’t be happy with you. I won’t ever pretend it’s okay to deliberately hurt a person. I’ll tell you what I think, and I won’t hold back, even if it makes you cry. But I’m not going anywhere.”