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"How about you tell me what you want, Hope," I suggested, going for cold, distant, unaffected. Even though all I wanted to do was beg her to tell me what was wrong with Andi, how she was handling everything.
"What I want? Oh, I want a lot of things. I want my coworkers to stop seeing me as a piece of ass. I want an actual paycheck for all my hard work. I want my neighbor to realize he has absolutely no skill with the guitar, so I can get a full night of sleep for a change. But most of all? Most of all, I want to look at Andi's face and see the girl I have known all my life. Because what I see there now is not her."
Those words were jagged knives to the heart.
But I needed to hear them.
I needed the reminder that I was the biggest asshole in the world, that I knew it, and now, Andi knew it too.
"Again, Hope, no fucking idea what you're talking about. This sounds like a conversation you should be having with her, not with me."
"Oh, you bastard. How can you do this to her?" Hope snapped, voice raising.
"I haven't done anything to her."
That was the biggest lie I had ever told in my entire life.
"You asshole," she hissed, tossing the shovel, moving in toward me, each step a threat in and of itself. "That girl looks broken and empty. Can you imagine seeing Andi smile but having her eyes look dead? I don't need to imagine it; I've seen it. And I know you did that to her."
"You don't know shit, Hope," I said, shrugging, moving past her to go fetch my shovel. But only because I needed an excuse to not have her look at my face right then. Because I knew there was no way to hide the look of shock, of pain that sliced through me at her words.
Because, no, I couldn't even imagine that.
Andi never smiled just with her lips. She smiled with her whole face, with her whole fucking spirit.
And she was right.
I had done that.
I'd done that.
I'd done it carefully and intentionally.
And I would punish myself until the end of my bitter fucking life for it. She didn't need to stand here and lecture me. Nothing she could say could be half as bad as the shit I'd been saying to myself since that night in my bathroom.
"I was on your side, you miserable fucking bastard," she said, jaw so tight that her words came out small, weak—two words you'd never usually associate with the force of nature that was Hope. "I was on your side and you fucked her over. You broke her."
"Enough," I said, moving past her to get back to the hole I was digging.
"No, nope. This is not nearly enough. See, here I was thinking that all these years you have gotten darker and uglier because you loved her, and you had to live with the fact that you couldn't have her. Stupid me, huh? Because no one who loved that girl could treat her like you must have to make her look like she's been looking."
"Good thing you didn't go into profiling like your parents. I don't think you have the chops for it."
I was just lying to everyone about everything these days.
"You loved her," Hope insisted, the depth of conviction in her words making me turn.
Somehow, I couldn't find a way to lie to her face right then.
"Yep."
"Then how could you do that?"
"You wouldn't understand, Hope."
"Clearly," she agreed.
"You came here to tell me I'm a dick. You told me. So why don't you head out now?" I suggested, glancing over, watching one of her brows arch up.
"Sure. Fine," she said, and I didn't like the look on her face as she turned to walk away. "Oh, one more thing."
"What?" I snapped, slamming the shovel into the ground, turning to look at her.
"It seems like that Toll guy has really taken an interest in Andi," she said, making my stomach drop.
If she was looking for a death blow, she found it. What's more, she took pleasure in delivering it.
Hell, I couldn't even blame her.
She was right.
I was a bastard.
I had hurt her.
I knew exactly what I was doing as I did it, too.
It never should have happened because that goddamn kiss shouldn't have happened. But I couldn't stop myself after having her so close, having her hands all over me, seeing something reflected in her eyes that I never thought I would see there.
Interest.
Attraction.
Still, it shouldn't have fucking happened.
Because the only way to handle it afterward was to push her away.
She could never be mine.
I knew how her father felt, how her uncles felt, how I always felt. She couldn't be with someone in this lifestyle. She couldn't handle it. She was too soft, too sweet, too easily upset. Sure, her mom was softer too, but there was grit there as well, something I never saw in Andi, something I never wanted to see.
