Total pages in book: 117
Estimated words: 112951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 565(@200wpm)___ 452(@250wpm)___ 377(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 565(@200wpm)___ 452(@250wpm)___ 377(@300wpm)
“Okay? I know. And it isn’t as if this was planned. We just, he just—I just . . .” No. No. No. I wasn’t explaining how I ended up in Shay’s bed last night. I pressed my hands to my forehead. A headache was forming, and I began to rub there, hoping to smooth it away.
It wasn’t working. I knew it wouldn’t work. I gave up.
Gage was looking at the ground. He stuffed his hands into his pockets. “You never said you weren’t in his bed. You would’ve jumped on that instantly if it wasn’t true.” He let his sentence hang, and I couldn’t refute it. He was right. I would’ve. I wasn’t pre-law anymore, but I still had that fighting spirit in me. I would’ve been all over that.
“No one knows.”
“Do you even know?”
My eyes flicked to his. “What do you mean?”
“Do you know what you’re doing? With him. I know what Parker did to you, and I wouldn’t wan—”
“Shay is not Parker. He’s the farthest thing from Parker.” I hoped.
My inside voice, the one I kept in the back of my mind, piped up, That isn’t true. I shut it down. Parker was popular. Parker was charismatic, and he had the whole school eating out of his hands. Parker was gorgeous, but that was it. The similarities ended there.
Parker was not Shay—no. Shay was not Parker.
I shook my head. What was I thinking there?
I laughed. “I’m good. It isn’t emotional. It’s just physical. I mean, we have rules.”
“I don’t need to hear them. Seriously. Please. No.”
“I get that.”
“I am sorry about last night. I felt horrible, and then I saw how furious Coleman was, and that made me feel even worse. Look, I don’t want to get involved with whatever you have going on, but he cares. I saw that last night. Linde cares, too. Whatever you have going on, those two guys are good friends right now.”
Right now.
I knew why my brother said that, because friendships end. Friendships fade. Friendships crash and burn sometimes. I nodded. “I know.” And since he mentioned Linde, I started, “Hey. Um. I have to talk to you about Casey.”
He’d started to head back but faced me again. “Sure. What?”
I had no other way to say this, so— “Don’t date her.”
“What?” He laughed this time, a hitch of nerves in there. “What are you talking about?”
“Linde’s sister was raped.”
“What does that have to do with Casey and me?”
I gave him a look. “Come on.” I didn’t wait for him to acknowledge what I knew was going on. The way his voice just sounded verified it for me. “Linde said that after his sister was raped, she used another guy to try to erase what the rapist did to her. She thought he could, I don’t know, replace what she was feeling on the inside.”
Gage had gone so still. He asked so quietly, “Did it work?”
I shook my head.
Another confirmation. My brother was already involved. He had feelings.
I murmured, “No. She pushed him away. Gage, did you—”
He shoved through the trees’ opening and went back to the library. I followed at a slower pace, but he was packing up his stuff when I got there. Shay and Linde were both watching. Aby was gone.
I stood behind my seat. “Gage, I—”
“Stop.” He was dead serious. “I think it’s really fucking stupid what you’re doing, so don’t tell me what I should do.”
“It isn’t the same thing.” I would not look at Shay.
Gage did. His eyes glanced to him before finding mine again. “Isn’t it? One guy destroyed you . . .” He didn’t finish his sentence. He let the insinuation linger, and I flushed.
Gage zipped his bag closed and left.
Fuck.
I sank down onto my chair.
Linde cleared his throat. “Do we even want to know what that was about?”
I shook my head. “No.” I didn’t look at him. I still didn’t look at Shay, and when Aby and Becca returned to the table, I didn’t look at them. I went back to the old Kennedy, the one who kept quiet, kept under the radar, and yearned for the sanctity of her planner and isolation.
“Clarke!”
I’d just left the library. We researched for a few more hours, but I was tired and that headache never left. It only got worse, and Shay was coming after me now. He called again, “Kennedy!”
I stopped and turned around. My bag fell off my shoulder, catching on my elbow with a thump before it could fall to the ground. “I’m tired, Shay. I just want to go back to my dorm.”
He slowed his pace, sliding his hands into his pockets as he drew near. “You were quiet after your brother left.”
“You don’t have to do this.” I didn’t want this. “We’re not dating.”
His eyes narrowed, and he tilted his head to the side. “This is called human decency. I still did stuff like this when we weren’t sleeping together, remember?”