Page 139 of All the way home

Outrage eclipses sympathy. “You’ve never asked what I think.”

“Didn’t have to,” he says. “You make a whole lot really clear on your face, Rena.”

“So based on that, you didn’t tell me that you thought my relationship was doomed?”

He keeps his eyes downcast. “Didn’t think you’d take relationship advice from me.”

Unfortunately, he has her dead to rights with that one.

Kieran takes her silence as confirmation, mouth flattening into a line.

“I don’t know how to do this,” she says, feeling hollow. “What do you need me to do?”

“I need you to be mad at me.”

Rena blinks.

“I need you to—I don’t know—shout at me or something. Tell me what you’re really thinking. With Oscar, you gave me hell for weeks.”

That, Rena wants to point out, was before. But she has an unpleasant sense that maybe that’s the point.

“And you’re mad at me again,” Kieran points out. “You hate Zach, and you’ve barely met him.”

Rena wants to staunchly object that she doesn’t hate Zach at all, but she knows what he really means, and unfortunately he’s right.

“So just—be angry. Say something. Anything real.”

A dozen words rise to the surface, trapped against her teeth.

“Please,” he says, desperation popping like a bubble.

Voice low, she says, “I just cannot believe you’re doing it again.”

“Tell me what you think I’m doing,” he says, and she can hear the undercurrent of urgency, splintering hurt.

“You’re playing with him,” Rena bursts out. “You led Oscar on, when you knew you’d never be serious about him—”

“I was a kid!”

“And you did the exact same thing to Josiah, only that was worse, because I saw exactly how you were with him.”

“I did not do the exact—”

“Didn’t you?” Rena pins him in place with a glare. “It’s the exact same thing. You let him think you were obsessed with him when you knew the stakes didn’t matter. When it didn’t have to go anywhere real. But you let him think it was real, right up until it bored you, and then what? You just disappeared? Not so much as an apology?”

Opening and closing his mouth, Kieran is, for once, at a loss for words.

“It’s cruel,” she says. “And you know it. Pretending you care when you don’t.”

The outrage drains from his expression, replaced by horror.

“I fucking loved him,” Kieran says, and his voice breaks. “I know it was short, but I—I thought . . .”

“So, what? You got scared enough to ghost him?” Rena asks. “Why wouldn’t you just—”

“I did ghost him, yeah.” Kieran throws his hands up. “And I’m not proud of it, okay? But what you have to understand is I’d do it again.”

“Why—”