“I should’ve known you’d be on his side,” I complain.
“I don’t know if you remember this, but Dalton hasn’t always been nice to me either.”
“He didn’t torture you as he did me.”
“Because I wouldn’t just roll over and let him do it.” Her jaw snaps shut.
“Tell me how you really feel about me,” I snap. “I’m weak, a punching bag for every kid at Westover Prep. I deserve everything that has happened to me because I don’t stand up for myself.”
“That’s not…” She sighs as she crosses the room to join me on the bed. “You’re not weak. You stood up for me in the kitchen, but when they were picking on you, you just stood there and took it. Why do you defend others and not yourself?”
“Because it wouldn’t matter. I only have one more year of this crap, and then I’m leaving Westover for good. There’s no sense in stirring stuff up.”
“You should—”
A knock on her bedroom door prevents the dispensing of what could only be immense levels of knowledge from the thirteen-year-old girl.
“Go away,” she snaps so loud I cover my ears. “Sorry.”
I laugh at her apology, but the chuckle fades away when her bedroom door opens, and Dalton pokes his head inside.
“What are you doing, creeper? We could be naked in here.”
Dalton rolls his eyes at his sister, but when he looks in my direction, his eyes roam over my body, and I can tell from the look on his face that he doesn’t hate the idea of seeing me naked. I swallow thickly before running the wad of toilet paper under my eyes. The action draws his attention to my face, and I hate that he’s seeing me so upset.
My nose is running, and I know my eyes are puffy and red. He’s not the one who made me cry this time, but the situation is way too familiar to all the times he was the reason I sat on a bed with tears in my eyes.
“Can you give us a minute?” Dalton asks his sister.
“No,” she answers immediately. “This is my room, jerk.”
I don’t know if she’s putting on a united front with me because she just wants to punish him or if it’s because she feels bad for taking up for him earlier.
“Please?” he asks.
“It’s okay, Peyton. Maybe just a few minutes.”
She huffs as she stands from the bed. “Just holler if he acts like an asshole. I’ll replace the cream filling in his Oreos with toothpaste.”
I cringe at the thought as she walks out of the room.
“Leave the door open,” she tells her brother. “She doesn’t want to be alone with you.”
“You told her that?” he asks after she’s gone.
“I didn’t say it out loud, but she seems pretty good at picking up social cues.”
He frowns as he draws closer, but he must see the look on my own face because he redirects himself from sitting on the bed beside me to plopping down on the floor.
“It’s clear that I did some super shitty stuff to you in the past.”
I huff. “That’s an understatement.”
“There’s nothing I can do to change any of that,” he continues, avoiding my addition to the conversation. “I don’t know what I can do to make it right. What I do know is that you’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen, and I’m certain that I realized that long before the accident.”
Cold chills sweep down my arms. Oh, how my life would’ve been different if he would’ve realized any of this before now.
“So, it got me thinking.”
“That’s dangerous,” I joke, trying to lighten the mood.
He chuckles, but his fingers continue to twist together in his lap. When he looks up at me, his green eyes are filled with so many emotions. Somehow, he no longer looks like the guy who has haunted my nightmares for the last twelve years, but I think this realization makes him even more dangerous.
“There has to be a reason for the way I treated you.”
“Other than the fact that you’re hateful and mean?”
Is he looking for a way to point the blame of his actions on me? How narcissistic is this jerk?
“Can you remember the first time I was mean to you?” he asks, not paying attention to my flippant question.
“The first day of kindergarten, you pushed me down and got my dress dirty.”
He smiles, and the sight of his cheeks pulling up startles me. He’s always been handsome, but he’s different right now.
“I probably liked you even back then.”
My brows scrunch. “Don’t give me that crap. My parents used to tell me ‘boys will be boys’ when I was younger, and I complained about you being mean to me. I don’t care if you were too young to use words like be my friend, or I think you’re pretty, hitting me, shoving me, and being mean to me was never okay.”