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To my surprise, Noah didn’t say much, but he growled lowly at me invading his space. Even if he was pissed, he didn’t entertain a fight. Not in front of Sara.
It just felt like another tactic of his to give her a reason to hate me. He wanted her for himself.
“Griffin, stop this!” Sara shouted, features completely distraught. She put herself between us as her magic ebbed away and faced Noah. “I’m sorry for how he’s acting right now, but can you please leave? I need to speak with him.”
Noah glanced hesitantly between the two of us, eyes hardening each time they landed on me. “Are you sure? I don’t want to leave you in a situation that might be dangerous.”
He was ridiculous.
I scoffed. “You’re hardly innocent after your stunt at the garage.”
Sara looked confused by that, unsure of what I was referring to, but she sighed. “Yes, I’m fine. Please go.”
With one last angry glance at me, Noah looked at her and softened somewhat. He nodded. “Fine. Call me if you need anything.”
Sara nodded, and Noah walked away, to my relief.
But even when he was gone, that anger was still very much alive and well. It wanted him to suffer for even trying to pull a fast one on me and trying to take Sara away.
We were alone at last, and Sara’s disbelieving eyes fell on me immediately. But I had questions of my own.
“Why were you with him—”
Not even entertaining my questions, she held up a hand to stop me with a hard expression. “I don’t think you realize how crazy that was, Griffin. I can’t believe you just did that.”
I pulled back again, not believing she could reduce it down to an overreaction.
“What I did? What about what he was doing?” I retorted.
“And what was he doing that warranted such a strong reaction from you?”
That irritation swelled within me, making me struggle to grasp the words I needed to say. “Surely you know. You can’t possibly be that blind.”
When she only looked at me, prompting a better answer from me, I sighed.
“He’s trying to get to me through you! He wants to take you from me.”
“That’s funny,” she muttered, crossing her arms over her chest. “Because I don’t recall we were even really dating in the first place.”
It hurt to hear her dismiss what had happened between us so easily, and my heart ached at that. “Sara—”
“You’re jealous, Griffin. And that’s fine, but you can’t be reacting like this, especially not here!” she said, still wearing that disapproval openly.
“How else am I supposed to react when I see him walking with you, head up high like he won? What am I supposed to do when I see him blatantly trying to be your boyfriend?” I asked, stunned that she didn’t get it. “What am I supposed to do when I thought we had something between us, and hoped more than anything that you felt the same? Don’t you get how devastating it feels to see you with him?”
Something moved through Sara’s eyes at that, but she pulled back, and her crossed arms acted like a barrier between us. “If you can’t control yourself, then I can’t be around you. In fact, I can’t do this anymore. I can’t keep pretending or putting myself through emotional turmoil just to try and understand what we are. I’m tired of wondering.”
The crack in my heart expanded at that, and I froze up.
Neither of us had been upfront about what was conspiring between us in the last few weeks. The touches, the undeniable tension, and the passion-filled nights we spent together.
Neither of us wanted to admit any real feelings that had sprouted from our fake arrangement.
But everything had come to a head at last, and it felt like I only had one chance to make it right.
“If you must know, Noah asked me to see him during my lunch break. I knew that he wanted something more from his advances, but I wasn’t interested. I was just in the middle of breaking it to him that I didn’t want to pursue anything with him, and I’d rather be friends,” Sara said with angry tears gathering in her eyes. “That I had fallen for my jackass next-door neighbor instead. But I see now that was probably a mistake.”
My heart fell as I took in her words and let the realization fall over me.
