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My hand pauses on the handle of the door and I glance over my shoulder. “Yes?”
Riley sits in the middle of her bed, looking both innocent and vulnerable. She holds her blanket up to her chin. “Thank you,” she breathes.
I swallow hard. How do I respond to that?
Riley Johnson is thanking me and I never thought I’d see that day. But here we are. How the tables have turned.
I nod in acknowledgement before walking away.
I only stayed with her last night because Lila was not here. Because Riley was alone.
I only stayed to complete my responsibility toward her— my promise to Lila to take care of Riley in her absence.
I don’t care for her…
I never did.
I never will.
Because I’m incapable of such humane sentiments.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Riley — 19 years old (A month later)
Maybe I was wrong about Colton Bennett.
Maybe my overthinking caused me to judge him too fast.
Maybe…just maybe, I should have given him a chance.
His previous words had indeed been cruel to me. They will undoubtedly be difficult to forget, especially his taunts. He knocked me down when I was already at my most vulnerable. My downfall had been his entertainment, after all.
But Colton was also there when I needed someone the most, when my heart had been full of fear and misery. He didn’t mock me or belittle me. I know somehow his kindness is because of Maddox and Lila. He doesn’t want to do something that will ruin the dynamic among the four of us. So he’s been…cordial to me.
But there's a difference between being civil to each other, and him holding me all night through a storm. He calmed me during a panic attack, when he didn’t have to.
If he had been as much of the heartless asshole I thought him to be, he would have walked away instead of staying the night in my bed.
Boys like Colton? They don’t hold girls all night and soothe them with kind words.
No, they fuck them and leave them. That’s what they do.
I don’t like him…
But I don’t think I hate him either.
I think…maybe we can get along if we get to know each other. A friendship of some kind. A truce. Friendships always develop with the most unlikely people, in the most unlikely circumstances.
Look at Maddox and Lila, for example. They are complete opposites, yet they have found a thread between them that connects their souls.
I want to tell Colton that but I don’t know how. How do I tell him that I want us to get along? I want to form a truce between us— something our fathers would be wildly against. But they don’t need to know about our friendship.
God, I think I might have actually lost my mind.
I’m thinking of becoming friends with Colton Bennett.
Maybe the heartbreak Grayson has left me with somehow has made me a little crazy in the head. At the thought of him, my broken heart squeezes.
