Open the door.
I hop off the bed and rush to the door, pulling it open a crack. I check to make sure that it’s only her on the other side. It is. Her red hair is tossed in a messy bun on top of her head, glasses perched on the tip of her nose. She looks like she hasn’t slept either.
I step aside to let her in. She slides inside my room and locks the door behind her. I don’t have to tell her that Carter is still not welcome beyond this door. She knows.
She studies my face carefully with tired, red-rimmed eyes.
I shake my head, unable to keep it together. I choke out a pained sob and Arden pulls me to her chest. She holds me, running her hand down my hair, squeezing me tightly, the way I need to be held right now. I’m shaking, agonizing pain flowing from my chest and out of my throat, right into her trusting hands.
“I’m so sorry,” she says, her voice cracking. “I didn’t mean for that to happen. I…I didn’t know what to do, Ariana. I was caught between two of my favourite people.”
“You should have asked me.”
“I tried,” she whispers, squeezing me even tighter. “You lied to me. Youkeptlying to me.”
I bury my face into her shoulder. I put her in a hard spot, I know that. I wouldn’t have stopped seeing him anyway, whether she knew about us or not, but I didn’t want her to have to choose between telling my brother or being loyal to me. I hadn’t realized that I was already making her do that.
She gently pulls away, holding me by the shoulders. “That did not go the way it should have gone, and how your brother reacted is not your fault.”
I wince, shaking my head. It was. All of it was my fault. I might not have done anything wrong, but I knew how this would end. It was always going to go up in flames. I put my brother and Boston in a guillotine that I knew was coming down.
Arden shakes me gently. “He needs to get his anger handled, Ariana. No matter what you did,thatwas not the answer.”
“I destroyed their friendship, and now I’m putting strain on your relationship. Of course, he’s mad.”
Her brow furrows. “Heis doing that! Your brother is putting strain on our relationship. He could havekilledhim, Ariana. Do you get that? He beat the hell out of him. Hisfriend.”
Her voice catches and she looks away, covering her mouth with a trembling hand. Oh, this is killing her. This is hurting her in that deep, questioning everything, type of way.
Guilt floods me. I reach for her hand and she squeezes with all of her might. I squeeze back, watching her through tears of my own.
Loving my brother is complicated. We know his heart. We know how genuinelygoodhe is, down to this core. He cares more than anyone can possibly understand and he loves hard. He loves loyally. He is the best man in the world, but there are parts of him that you can’t ignore. The scary parts. The parts that he needs help with. They take over. They are nothim,they belong to his anger, thatotherpiece of him that lives inside his mind.
He was doing well, too, and I pushed him right back into that madness.
“I love your brother,” she whispers, her voice shaking, “but I love you, too, and I’m never going to stand in his corner when he’s hurting you like this. I’m never going to stand back and accept that he can do that to his friend.”
“I know,” I sniffle, clutching her palm. “It’s not his fault. We all knew what would happen if I crossed that line?—”
“Consenting sex should not result in bloodshed,” she snaps, her grip turning lethal. “He cannot react like that because you fell in love with somebody who healsoloves.”
“I didn’t mean to fall in love with him,” I say, and her eyes soften. I plead with her to understand that putting us all in this position wasn’t my goal. “I tried not to. This is why I don’t date men like him, Arden. I don’t want this…pain. I don’t want the risks that come with loving someone. The idea that I can lose them. That my brother might scare them off. That they can walk away. That they won’t love me back.”
“If he wasn’t who he is, you’d be happy right now, wouldn’t you?” she asks.
“No,” I say, letting out a pained breath. “Boston doesn’t want a relationship. He has been very clear on that. He cares about me but he doesn’t want any sort of a future like that. I was the one who went off script.”
Arden winces, brushing her thumb over my knuckles. “I’m sorry, Ari.”
I smile gently. “Me too.”
And I am. I think in another universe, somewhere far away, in a world where no pain had touched either of us and we were just allowed tobe—we could have been happy.
“Want to watch a movie and cuddle for a bit?” she asks. “I’ll go make us some iced coffees and bring Stinky in for a snuggle.”
I smile, nodding as I wipe my eyes. When I’m extremely sad, she always lets me hold that stuffed skunk. She says he has healing powers, and I have observed nothing that tells me otherwise.
“Yeah. That sounds good.”
