Chapter Three
S he felt like an idiot. She had broken the most sacred, unspoken oath that she had ever taken. To never, ever signal to him that she wasn’t over it. That she thought about him like that all the time. That she thought about them .
No. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. She was supposed to be stronger, braver, smarter. But everything had gone sour inside of her when he had mentioned Beth. Was she really no better than that? Getting jealous because all of a sudden he had mentioned a woman by name?
That was hideous. Awful.
But she was stagnant. When it came to love and sex and moving on, she hadn’t managed to figure out how to do that. She had known there would be a time when both of them would, when they had to. She had intentionally put herself in a holding pattern through college, and it had seemed reasonable. Her mom had instilled in her a fair amount of worry when it came to unexpected pregnancy, and that had been reason enough to focus on her studies instead of being sexually active. At least, that was what she told herself most days. Because telling the truth, making it about Colton, was too painful.
But the idea that he might have somebody else when she didn’t, that stung.
Oh, she was certain there had been other women. But he had never mentioned any of them. And now there was a name. It made her real; it made her important.
He had someone else.
As long as Lily had played this game of chicken, as long as they had been engaged in a game where they didn’t mention their past, she could believe he was as wound up as she was. She could believe he was as tangled up in all this as she was. But he had mentioned Beth, and Lily had swerved, so she was the loser. She was the one who oh so clearly couldn’t deal with it. She was the one who wasn’t over it.
And that was a significantly humiliating thing.
More than that, it ached. Like a lance straight to the heart.
But instead of acknowledging it, and instead of dealing with it, she got in his truck and slammed the door closed behind her. She could hear her own breathing echoing around her; she hated the silence. She hated all of it. She tried to take a breath, and her chest hurt. Everything hurt.
He got in the car, and he didn’t say anything.
She recognized the game he was playing. This one where he didn’t look at her so he could try to make her feel unimportant.
Or maybe it isn’t a game. You just are unimportant to him. Because he has Beth, and he’s normal, and he doesn’t care about the fact that you thought you were in love with him when you were seventeen.
That was galling.
The drive back to the house was short, and neither of them said anything.
“Look,” she said as they pulled up. “Groceries.”
There was a stack of brown bags against the door, and she wished she hadn’t said anything, because she really was doing the most to betray how disturbed she was by all of this.
She couldn’t have made it more obvious if she had tried.
As soon as he put the truck in Park, she all but fell out of it, her shoes crunching on the icy gravel as she scampered up to grab the groceries, feigning an interest in them that simply didn’t exist. Not on the level that she was trying to portray.
She was far too aware of him as he unlocked the door and opened it, picking up the majority of the groceries and following her inside.
“We gotta at least get the refrigerated stuff put away,” she said.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said.
“That’s what you have to say? Yes, ma’am?”
Because he was still doing it. He wasn’t commenting on what she had said, and if he was normal about it all, he would have. If it wasn’t a game, he simply would have asked her if she was still bothered by their past relationship.
“You don’t have anything to say?”
She made a decision then and there. She didn’t have any pride left to salvage, so she might as well go all in. Because the truth was she was held back by all of this. Exceedingly. Ridiculously. She was.
And she was stuck here with him. If she had this venue, this moment, to vent her spleen without anybody else being around to hear it, then why shouldn’t she take it? Why shouldn’t she say it all?
The spell was broken. This silent vow to never speak of what had passed between them.
And it hung between them all the same.
So why not? Why not keep going?
“We’ve never been fine,” she said.
“Sure we have been,” he said, his eyes cool. “We’ve been just fine this whole time. We’ve never had to have a come-to-Jesus, we’ve never had to shout about it. We’ve been fine since the morning we caught our parents sleeping together and lectured them the way they did us and moved right on into being family. Just fine.”
“That’s a lie,” she said. “And you know it. What we are is a mess of memory. And we won’t even let ourselves have the memories. Because we’re both just... In a stalemate. And I’m tired of it. I don’t feel normal around you. I never have. It’s been five years, and nothing feels normal. It doesn’t feel okay. I’m not over it.”
Suddenly, his unreadable eyes flashed with fire. It was like a veil had been torn away, and she could see him. She could really see him. Fury and all.
“What the hell am I supposed to do with that? You’re the one who broke up with me, remember? I don’t have shit to do with this awkwardness. I don’t have anything to do with this,” he said, moving his hand between them. “You didn’t ask me what I wanted. You told me how it was going to be, and now you’re angry? You think that somehow I’ve created the situation?”
“No,” she sputtered. “But I... You just always acted like nothing happened. You always acted like you were fine.”
“Oh, does that bother you, Lily? Did you want to break my heart? Would that have made things better for you? Easier? If you could have felt like you had power in the situation, would you be happier?”
“Of course not. I wanted things to be okay between us. I wanted to stop the relationship before we got in too deep. Before it was impossible for us to come back from it.”
Yet it had been too late.
That was the thunderous, ridiculous realization she had right then. Because they had been in love. She had spent all this time gaslighting herself into believing they hadn’t been. That they couldn’t possibly. Because they were too young. That it hadn’t been real. That they needed to go to college. That what they’d felt was a common thing. A useful connection that would be forgotten about in due time.
And instead, he was her defining heartbreak.
She thought of him that way sometimes, but not seriously. Her teenage heartbreak. How silly. How small. Except it had never been silly or small. It had left a crack inside of her that had never healed.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I realize now that what I thought was wrong. I just thought we could...end it, and then it wouldn’t really be heartbreak. That we could end it, and then everything would be fine, because we were kids and we would get over it. But I’m not over it. I’m not. It isn’t that I need you to have a broken heart about it, Colton, it’s that I need to admit that I do. It’s that I have never gotten over this. It’s that I went to college and met other people, and I didn’t feel interested in them at all. It’s that I never even let anyone else kiss me. Because I couldn’t handle it. It’s because... I’m still a virgin, because I can’t get over this, and I can’t deal with it, because I’ve been lying to myself about what it is. It’s because I never called it what it really was. It was love. And I broke my own heart. So what am I supposed to do with that?”
She was breathing hard, and she felt humiliated. Small. Maybe this was why small talk was so hard between them. They had nothing small to say to each other. But apparently there were a lot of big things.
“Don’t tell me this shit,” he said.
“Why not?”
He moved closer to her. “Because I can’t know that you haven’t touched another man. That you haven’t kissed one, let alone had sex. I can’t know that.”
“Why not?” She pressed. She didn’t care about Beth right then. Because what did Beth have to do with them? What could she possibly be next to the enormity of this? What could anything possibly be next to this?
Why had Lily been so quick to push aside her own feelings when she had been in the middle of this?
She couldn’t answer that question right now, because the only thing was that heat rising up inside of her. The fire and determination to do something with the yawning ache inside of her.
She needed it. She needed him.
It was the only thing.
The only cure. The only possible answer.
“I can’t know it,” he said. “Because I’m going to end up taking it as a reason to do what I wanted to do for a long time.”
“What is that?”
“Don’t,” he said.
“Tell me,” she said. “I was brave enough to say all this—you be brave enough to tell me what you want.”
“I want what I always wanted. I want you naked and underneath me. I want to corrupt you. That is what I want. It is what I’ve wanted since I first laid eyes on you. Because that was the whole point of it, wasn’t it? The bad boy and the good girl? What is the fucking point if the bad boy doesn’t take your virginity, Lily? Huh? What kind of fun fantasy was that?”
“Nothing about it was fun,” she said.
“Damn straight,” he said.
This felt dangerous. They were here, by themselves. There was no one around to stop them. No one around to make them think better of this. No one around to make them want to be better versions of themselves. No. There was only this.
Her heart was thundering hard at the base of her throat. She took a step toward him. “I guess I got all the heartbreak and none of the benefits.”
“You broke your own heart, remember? I didn’t do a damn thing.”
She shook her head. “If it makes you feel better, you’ve broken my heart at least a dozen times since then. Every time I ever looked at you and couldn’t... Couldn’t be honest with you. Couldn’t be close to you. It’s never felt right. Having to live with you, treat you like a member of the family? What a joke. We’re the reason they’re together. We’re the reason this family exists, and we’re the only two that can never fully...feel like it’s a family.”
“What do you want, Lily?”
“Maybe I want what I lost? Maybe I want the opportunity that was taken from me.”
“I’m going to need you to say it.”
“Kiss me.”
“We’re not seventeen anymore. If you only want to kiss, you need to say that up front.”
She shook her head. “I don’t only want to kiss.”
“Praise God,” he said.
Then he closed the distance between them, and his mouth touched hers.