Because who I find outside the restroom is the very last person I’d hoped to find.
In fact, I wish that I’d never run into him.
I wish that I’d never set my eyes on him in the first place.
On Reign Davidson.
My ex-boyfriend’s best friend.
CHAPTERNINE
You’re a slut.
That’s what he said to me. The very last time we talked.
His exact words were: “Maybe it’s a good thing you said no to him. Because I think he’s better off without you after all. He’s better off without the hungry fucking slut who pounced on the guy she claims to hate. Stay the fuck away from him. And me.”
I went to him, see. For help.
After everything happened, Lucas wouldn’t pick up my calls so like an idiot, I calledhimup as my last resort. I wanted us to go together to Lucas so we could explain that it meant nothing, that ourstupid kissmeant nothing. It was a mistake — a horrible, horrendous, grave, awful mistake — and that I’d do anything to make up for it.
But he rejected the idea. He refused to help me.
He refused to lifteven a fingerto help me.
And why would he? He never wanted us to get together in the first place. In fact, I bet he must’ve used this opportunity to put even a greater wedge between me and Lucas.
So yeah, I called him to ask for help and he kicked me when I was already so down.
And here he is again.
Looking at me.Staringat me.
And my heart is beating right now like it used to beat back then. My body is shaking the way it used to back then as well. My skin is trembling.
“Nice dress,” he drawls, his eyes going up and down my body.
And I have to press my back up against the wall.
Not only at his voice — that two years later sounds so much deeper and rougher, more sanded down, as if he barely uses it — but also because of what he just said.
What he always says. What he alwaysnotices.
When he sees me.
My dress.
It feels like no time has passed at all. It feels like I saw him only yesterday. That only yesterday, I turned sixteen and he climbed through my window. Only yesterday, he had me trapped between my bedpost and himself.
And I made the biggest mistake of my life and I lost everything.
No.
No, no, no.
I don’t want to think about that. I don’t want to think about that night or anything else that came before.
So I shut those thoughts down and thank God that I’m not wearing pink.