Chapter 16
“Nova!” I shout as I spin on my heels and race for the door. The knob is jammed. It’s locked from the outside. I pound on the wood. “Let us out!”
“No,” comes her slightly apologetic reply.
“Nova!” I yell again, this time through clenched teeth.
“I’m sorry!” she calls back. “But you two need to figure out your shit! We can’t let this fester for another whole year.”
“We?” Nox drawls. I don’t need to turn around to know his eyebrows are arched practically to the ceiling. It’s clear from his tone.
I yank on the curtain to the left of the door. All four of our best friends stand sheepishly on the other side of the glass wall. Willa winces, offering a little wave.
My jaw drops. “You’re all in this together?”
“It’s for the good of the group,” Logan answers, not even pretending to feel any remorse.
“We just want everyone to be friends,” Nova adds.
I toss her a pointed look. “You told me you were perfectly fine with me hating him.”
A snort fills the silence behind me. “Really, Nova? Thanks.”
“I know.” She cringes and looks over my shoulder. “Sorry.” Her green gaze darts back to me. “But that was all the way at the beginning of the year. I didn’t think it would last this long. People usually like Nox. He’s very likable. I thought he’d win you over eventually.”
“So, what’s the plan?” I ask, staring them all down. “You’re just going to keep us locked up in here until we get along or die?”
“Pretty much.” Logan nods, fighting laughter.
“We left snacks,” Willa adds, pointing to a basket by the mirrors.
I frown. “You can’t be serious.”
“We love you!” Nova calls, starting to back away. The rest follow her lead, taking one step behind, then another, inching farther and farther toward the exit.
“Nova!” I shout and slam my palms against the glass. “Willa! Come on! Let me out!”
“Text us when you’re friends!”
The four of them slip out the door—gone. With a growl, I turn to Nox. “This is absurd.”
“Don’t look at me. I’m not the one who chose to be friends with my sister. I got stuck with her.”
“What are we going to do?”
“Become friends?” He shrugs, but the edges of his mouth quirk, giving away the game.
I glare at him. “Be serious.”
He sighs and goes over to sit next to the basket, reaching for a snack before answering. “We sit here for an hour so it’s convincing, then tell them we made peace. Simple.”
“Yeah, except I don’t want to be stuck in here with you for the next hour.”
“Afraid their plan might work?” He waggles his brows and bites an energy bar in half.
“No.” I scoff and drop down on the other side of the basket, grabbing a bag of chips. “It’s the last night of our freshman year. My parents will be here in like eighteen hours. Wouldn’t you rather spend it with someone else, too?”
He drops his head back to the mirror and finishes chewing. “Is Lover Boy waiting?”
“No.”
He pauses with the power bar halfway to his lips, letting his face fall toward me. “No?”
“We ended things, if you must know.” I stare at the ceiling and shove another chip in my mouth, feeling him trace my profile.
“You don’t seem too broken up about it.”
I’m not. I should’ve cut it off months ago.
I probably should have never started it in the first place.
But I did, and then I just let it go on and on, because I didn’t know how to turn him down without hurting his feelings.
He’s a great guy. He’s just not the right guy for me.
I knew it the first time we kissed. I knew it every time after that, when the thrill of potentially being seen became a bigger draw than the thrill of his hand slipping under my shirt.
It’s why I never let it go too far. He was a pawn in a game I’m not really even sure why I’m playing.
So when he told me he accepted a spot in a PhD program in Hawaii, I wished him the best and told him no hard feelings.
I can’t admit any of that to Nox, though—not when he’s the guy at the other end of the chessboard.
“It ran its course,” I offer instead.
He makes a noncommittal sound and polishes off his bar before opening another one. I grab my phone and start scrolling to pass the time, but it does little to distract me from the weight of his gaze. I hold off as long as I can before I snap.
“Stop staring at me.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s creepy.”
“Is it?”
“Yes.” I turn to him with a hard look. “And stop asking me questions.”
“But it’s so fun to watch you squirm.”
My nostrils flare as I turn back to my phone.
His attention doesn’t falter. A few minutes pass.
I pretend to scroll, but the screen is a blur.
My focus is consumed by the awareness of him watching me.
My body warms under the weight of it, my clothes suddenly scratchy against my skin, too tight, almost claustrophobic.
“Nox!”
“What?”
He’s so nonchalant it pisses me off. “Would you stop?”
“Stop what?”
“Stop with the staring and the questions. Just…go sit over there in the corner and leave me alone.”
He pauses a moment as if considering it. “Nah.” A deviant little smile crosses over his lips. “I don’t think I will.”
“Fine.”
I roll to my feet and quickly cross the room, feeling his gaze on me the entire time.
I refuse to meet his eyes as I find my new spot and sit down.
The twenty extra feet of space does little to diffuse the heat blossoming across my chest. There’s nowhere to hide in this stupid studio.
Nowhere to escape. My heart starts to pound, so loud I’m worried he must hear it cutting through the silence.
I risk a peek. His feet stretch out, ankles crossed while he lounges against the mirror.
My eyes lift to his face, lured by a magnetic charge I can’t fight.
When our gazes meet, he waves at me with a lazy smile, cool as a fucking cucumber.
I want to gouge out his eyes.
“This isn’t working.” I stand and start to pace. He crosses his arms, observing me without saying a word. “I’m calling Nova. I’ll tell her we’re friends. I’ll tell her anything she wants to hear to get the hell out of here.”
“It’s been like ten minutes, Clara. She’ll never believe you.”
I put my hands on my hips. “Do you have a better idea?”
“I already told you my idea.”
“I’m not staying in here with you for another fifty minutes. I’ll go crazy.”
“You’ll go crazy?” he mutters, raising his brows at me.
Honestly, if I strangle him right now, I think the cops would be on my side. “Nox.”
“Fine.” He sighs this dramatic heavy sigh as he stands, as though he’s doing me the biggest favor in the world by not being a pain in my ass for thirty whole seconds, and retrieves his phone. “I’ll call Nova. She’ll listen to me. But I’m going to need to give her something to make it believable.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know.” He shrugs. “Why don’t you tell me why you hate me?”
“We hate each other.”
“Why though?” he presses.
“Because you are an arrogant know-it-all and I am a stubborn scaredy-cat, and we both have walls so high you could probably see them from the moon.”
“That’s not why.”
I frown and offer him a pointed stare. Case in point.
He rolls his eyes. “That’s why we argue so much. It’s not why you hate me.”
“No?”
“No.”
I cross my arms, waiting for him to elaborate, but the silence stretches on and on until it’s clear he’s not going to break.
So I do.
I need out of this freaking pressure cooker of a room.
“Fine! God.” I exhale a heavy breath. “You want to know the truth? I hate you because every time I’m around you it’s like staring into a mirror of my deepest insecurities. I mean, you’re literally the best swimmer in the entire world.”
“One of,” he interjects.
I growl as my fingers curl in the air as if to strangle him. “Fine, one of the best swimmers in the entire world and I can’t even dunk my head into the fucking pool.”
“You did. I saw you.”
I recoil, the information striking just as tangibly as a punch. You did?
He was training with his coach in the other pool.
I didn’t think either of them was looking.
I was up to my shoulders, the farthest I’ve been all year, and I kept telling myself over and over to just dive in, to let go, to lift my feet and let gravity pull me under, but I couldn’t.
I retreated back to the steps, shame curdling in my gut.
With my hand on the railing, connecting me to solid ground, an ounce of bravery struck.
I dipped underneath, just for a moment, in and out with barely enough time for the droplets to cling to my hair, before I raced away.
My defenses soften, just an inch, just a touch, before I shake my head. “I don’t even know if that counted.”
“It counted,” he says, so quietly I strain to hear. A prickling sensation spreads beneath my skin, like sleeping nerves waking back to life. It cuts off the moment he reopens its mouth. “And that’s not why.”
Wow. And here I thought we might actually be having a moment. “You don’t think you being the living embodiment of my greatest shame is enough reason for me to hate you?”
“Oh, it is.” He shrugs. “For someone else, maybe. But that’s not why you hate me.
I thought maybe it was at first. Or that it had something to do with the secret reason you’re afraid to swim.
But it doesn’t. Because you don’t hate me when we’re in the pool.
If you did, you would have stopped coming.
You hate me everywhere else. And I’d like to know why. ”
My heart drums in my ears.
Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump.
Nox’s gaze holds me captive. We’ve moved closer together.
I’m not exactly sure when, but all of a sudden, he’s towering over me, all I can see, all I can sense.
Even if I could break free, there’s nowhere to run.
The only way to escape is to finally give him a small kernel of the truth.
Not the deepest one. Not the one I’m still unprepared to face.
But just enough to get him off my back, to put him on the defensive.
“You said I was a brat,” I murmur.
He goes still beside me. “What?”
“That day I met Logan at the carnival, I came to your room to apologize for what happened at the pool and to thank you for saving me in the lake, but before I could, I overheard the two of you talking. You asked him about me. You told him that I was a brat, that I was the last thing you needed, that I was the type of girl who’d only be a distraction. ”
Recognition burns in his eyes, remembrance, followed by something else—ire. “That’s why you hate me!?”
“Yes!” I shout back, my own anger unleashed. How dare he act as if I’m the asshole when he’s the one who said it.
“You were being a brat!” he accuses.
“And you were being a jerk!” I fling right back.
“You guys said I was high maintenance, like the worst night of my life, like my trauma, like my f—” I cut off with a sharp inhale.
Like my friend dying. That’s what I was going to say, but I can’t.
Not here. Not now. Not like some dart I need to throw to score points.
Mabel deserves more than that. So I hold her name and her memory close.
I protect them from becoming a weapon. “Like my fear of swimming,” I say instead, my voice soft but sharp as a knife, “a fear you saw play out firsthand, was just some silly inconvenience I was using for attention, some ploy I was using to distract you, instead of a daily torture I am doing everything in my power to overcome.”
“I never said that!” he charges. “You put words into my mouth.”
“Then what did you mean?” I ask, riding my high horse as long as I possibly can.
“Exactly what I said. That you’re a distraction, Clara!”
“What does that mean, Nox?”
Storm clouds gather in his eyes. His lips purse.
His jaw clenches. The pressure builds, morphing his expression, edging it with torment.
Whatever battle he’s waging, I see the moment he loses.
Or maybe wins. I’m not sure which, but lightning dances across his eyes and suddenly he’s so close the heat of him sinks into my skin.
The words explode up his throat with the force of a seismic shift that would put the Cascadia Subduction Zone to shame.
All my hairs stand on end as the energy crackles between us.
“It means that I’m here with you when I should be in the pool. That I’m thinking about you when I should be thinking about my competition. That I’m focused on you when I should be focused on the podium. Fuck!”
He jerks away, presenting me with his back.
For the first time since I’ve known him, I get the sense that maybe I’m not the only one who’s been running away.
From my fears. From my past. From whatever the hell this is between us.
But before I can say another word, his phone is to his ear.
He glances at me over his shoulder, and it’s as if I can see the walls rise back up in his eyes.
Citrine highlights disappear behind an evergreen shade.
He swallows, stares. I get the sense he’s on the verge of saying something, anything, when he grips his phone, eyes losing focus.
“Nova.”
I curl my fingers into a fist to keep from grabbing the device and shattering it against the wall just to keep this conversation going five minutes longer. I’m the one who wanted out. I still do.
Right?
“Yes, she’s right here. Alive and well. My new best friend,” he drawls.
I don’t know how he does it—sound so unaffected when I can still see the heaving rise and fall of his chest. “Yes. Yes. We reached an agreement. I’m going to help her pass her scuba test next year and she’s going to stop envisioning ways to kill me from across the lunch table. Satisfied?”
He grunts and hangs up.
I narrow my eyes. “What do you mean, you’re going to help me pass my scuba test?”
He turns to me, carefully controlled mask fully back in place. “You want to go to Australia your junior year, right? Isn’t that why you were mooning all over that asshole?”
“Yes,” I say, then wince. “I mean, no, but—”
“I’m going to help you get there,” he cuts in, not giving me a chance to explain. “Swim lessons. Next year. With me. You’re getting over this fear of swimming. You’re passing that test. And you’re going to fucking Australia.”
I frown. “What’s in it for you?”
“Some goddamn peace of mind.”
With that, he brushes by me and lifts up the basket. A shiny silver key flashes in the studio lights. He grabs it with a sneer.
“Wait!” I call as he swings open the door. Nox freezes in the frame, not turning around, but not leaving either. “You never told me why you hate me.”
He glances over his shoulder, pinning me to the spot, searing me with his gaze. “I never said I did.”