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My pulse thrashes violently. His sea and sky? Since when?
The cheerleader abandons him, snarling at me as she brushes past, knocking me in the shoulder. But my focus on Landon never wavers. And shit, I need some words before I get lost in those sad gray eyes all over again.
“I came to tell you to shut it down,” I answer lamely. “Some of us are trying to sleep.”
Darkness seeps into his features, and his gaze grows distant as though he’s coming back to himself. As if, for a second, he forgot who he really was.
“What are you going to do about it, little demon?”
That word from his lips hits me like a cannon, obliterating whatever truce I may have thought we had. How many times did I see that stupid word carved into my locker? It’s one thing from them… but him? Molten hot rage bubbles up inside me, and there’s nowhere else for it to go. I take aim and fire without mercy.
“Very funny.” I cross my arms to hide the tremble in my body. “By the way, if you’re looking for your mother, she’s just down the hall, sucking off all your friends.”
My parting shot hits him where it hurts. I can see it on his face, at least momentarily, before the storm clouds roll into his eyes. I wounded him, and there should be some satisfaction in that, but as I turn on my heel and march myself back to the pool house, I feel worse than ever.14Landon“I bet Coach is pretty pissed, huh?” Carson sinks his head back into the sofa and sighs.
“He hasn’t been by to see you?” I sit down on an overstuffed, ridiculously ugly floral chair. A remnant of his mother’s midlife crisis when she decided to redecorate everything before she ran off with a man half her age.
“My dad said he stopped by,” Carson mumbles. “But I was pretty out of it. It’s not like it matters, though. I won’t be back on the field before the season ends.”
He glances at his elevated knee with droopy, unfocused eyes. He looks like hell. Actually, he’s looked like hell for a while, but I didn’t want to get into it with him by nagging his ass. Two years ago, Carson would have never dreamed of showing up to practice drunk. He talked about going pro all the time. It was all he ever talked about. And then shit happened, and here we both are, two completely different people who can barely look at each other.
I’m not sure why I’m here. He probably doesn’t expect it of me. We keep up appearances at school, but we haven’t had a real conversation since I busted his nose. Now the gap between us is so wide I don’t even know where to start.
“I drank last night.” The admission tumbles from my mouth without much thought. Something about this sad, dark room feels like a confessional. Carson knows since that night, the night we don’t talk about, I’ve only drank one time, and it ended in disaster.
His jaw flexes, and his gaze moves over my head as though he can’t even look at me. “Did you go to her?”
“No.” I drag a hand through my hair, regretting what I’m about to say. “She came to me.”
He’s quiet, but I know what he’s thinking. I’m fucking stupid for letting her back in. This whole situation is a bonfire, and she’s the gasoline.
“I sent her away,” I add, leaving out the part where I was a dick. I also leave out the part about wanting her to stay.
Carson’s shoulders relax, and he jerks his chin in acknowledgment. He thinks I did the right thing. I can always count on him to tell me so when it comes to Kail.
“So you had a few drinks. Don’t beat yourself up about it.” He reaches for the bottle of prescription pain medication on the side table and swallows three of them.
We’re both fucked.
What happened that night with Kailani can’t be undone. I think it may have screwed us up for life. Regret is a heavy burden to carry, and maybe this is what we both deserve. Maybe it’s just easier to hate her because it’s a free pass from reality. There are days I’m convinced she’s a liar and a schemer because it’s the only thing that makes sense. But then on other days when she looks just as broken, I find myself questioning everything.
“I think the best thing we can do is stay away from her,” Carson says as if he can hear my thoughts. “She doesn’t want to hear the truth.”
“You should stay away from her,” I warn him, silently reminding myself that I can’t. I never will. She’ll hate me for last night, but this is what we do. We hurt each other. We fuck each other up in the head. And then we come back for more because we’re addicts.
