I fist the fabric and shake my head. “No, you won’t.”
He doesn’t like that and it’s clear on his furious face. “Echo, just fucking —”
“He hates me. He truly hates me.”
And why wouldn’t he?
I was a bad girlfriend. I never realized that up until now.
I mean, I knew what I’d done was bad.
But tonight, I got to see my relationship with Lucas in a different light. In a new,awfullight. Where I never gave him all of myself. Where all I did was take, make him wait and wait and then stab him in the back.
Why would he want to get back together with me?
Why would he want to haveanythingto do with me?
“He doesn’t.”
“I never had a chance,” I tell him, hiccupping. “I never had a chance to fix anything because I… broke everything so badly. He was so…”
“He was sowhat?”
Rivers of tears stream down my cheeks. “Angry. He was so mad, Reign. And I don’t know what I could possibly do to get him to forgive me. To get him to stop. To get him back toyou.”
Because somehow, in this moment, that’s the only thing that matters.
To save their friendship.
The one that began on that playground so many years ago.
A growl escapes him. “I told you, didn’t I? You don’t need to worry about me. You don’t fucking need —”
I don’t give him a chance to say whatever it is he was going to because I move in.
Without thought, I put my arms around his warm and strong body, and hug him.
I press my cheek on his hard but comforting chest and drench his t-shirt in my hot tears.
I don’t expect him to do anything.
I don’t expect him to hug me back. He probably thinks I’m being too dramatic right now. He probably doesn’t even like it, even though he let me cry on him the other night.
But he does do something.
After several seconds of being all rigid and strained while breathing wildly, he lets his muscles relax a bit. And then in the most astonishing turn of events, he brings his arms up and wraps them around my body.
I finally drag a breath then.
A hiccuppy breath, laced with tears, but a breath nonetheless.
As I burrow in his chest.
As I hide myself in his body and he lets me. In fact he makes it happen himself when he tightens his hold and puts his large hand on the back of my head to press my cheek to his body even more.
And God, it feels so nice.
It feels like I could sleep like this, pressed up against his summer-like body.