“My brothers.” I look around, and I hate to admit it, but I’m looking for Olivia. I’m an idiot.
She pouts, tugging me toward the courtyard. “You promised me coffee today.”
“I didn’t promise anything.”
She stops then, turning to face me, her eyes narrowed. “You’re thinking about her, aren’t you?” Her voice is hard, and annoyed.
“Thinking about who?” I know I’m playing stupid, but Jen is smart, she knows the truth. But no one in this school knows the history between us, nor why I hate Leo so much.
“Don’t play dumb. You know who.”
I pull away from her, annoyed now. “Jen, drop it.”
“For someone you hate, you think about her a lot,” she says, her voice rising just enough to earn a few curious looks from students passing us. “You think no one sees it? You barely evenseeme when I’m with you. I’m a body, a placeholder, someone to push your anger into?—”
“Then stop coming back,” I snap. Silence stretches between us. She flinches but doesn’t move. I think this is the first time I’ve raised my voice at her, but she also knows she’s nothing special to me. She’s someone to have fun with at school, nothing more, and it never will be. “Why do you even care?” I add, my voice low. “You knew what this was from the start.”
Her chin trembles for a split second before she locks it down. “I didn’t think I’d be competing with her. Other girls, yes, but someone you say you hate, no.”
I shove my hands in my pockets and walk away with my brothers, because if I stay, I’ll say something worse, and I don’t want that. Especially because Olivia isn’t a ghost, she never was, she was just the girl who broke me in more ways than I can ever say.
I can’t kill her memory if she keeps walking these halls like she owns the right to exist in my world.
I pull out my phone as I head toward the outside eating area with the group. The burn of the sun on my neck is hitting hard today, and I hear Mason talking about the girl he might try his luck with next. I swear he slept with most of the girls in his year.
“You know you’re going to fuck your way through school,” Miles jokes with him, but it makes me laugh. “Have you touched all the teachers yet?”
We sit down at one of the free tables, and the first thing I do is scan the grounds to see if I see her. Why? God knows.
“Most of the teachers are old or married. I’ll wait for a young single one to come,” Mason replies, and pats my back. “What about you, you found a girl for yourself?” I turn to face my brothers, and they both see it on my face. “H, she fucked up and not in a small way. But?—”
“But nothing.” I cut him off before he can even finish the sentence, there's no way I can forgive her for what she did.
But I’m scanning the grounds again like a fucking psychopath. Hoping to get another glimpse of her. I don’t see her. Not near Abigail. Not near the law building. Not in the café she usually ducks into to avoid attention.
It’s starting to piss me off. I don’t want to care where she is. I shouldn’t give a fuck. But every second she’s not where I expect her to be makes me itch under my skin like I’ve got something crawling through me.
Mason’s still talking, running his mouth about someone he hooked up with, and Miles is arguing with him about the ethicsof ignoring a text after sex. Normal. Casual. Loud. And all I want to do is punch something. I wonder if I can ask Cain to give me a hit, just so I can get the thrill of killing someone.
I walk away from the table not saying a word to Mason or Miles as I let them continue with their stupid conversation. Shoving my hands in my pockets, I move to the back of the business hall, where it’s quiet. Away from everything.
Then I see it. Her car. That beat-up thing that probably shouldn’t even be allowed on the road. It’s parked under the tree line, tucked into the far corner of the lot like she’s trying to disappear.
I walk over without thinking, I don’t even know what I’m planning to do until I knock on the window.
A part of me doesn’t blame her, I mean Leo is here, and from what Cain told me about her shift he was trying to talk to her, but she wanted nothing to do with it. Then there's me. The man she thought was her friend but now hates her the most.
She’s got a paper bag on the passenger seat, and her eyes are locked on a book, one hand holding the pages back, the other lazily pulling fries from the bag. She’s completely unaware of anything around her. Completely Olivia.
She always does this. Hides herself in books like the world doesn’t exist. She always had a book in her hand, and it looks like nothing has changed.
And I fucking hate that it still does something to me. The memories of us together.
She jumps, her book slips from her hand and lands between the seats. She doesn't do anything but tries to pick her book back up, but she’s finding it hard to stop her hands from shaking.
I tap the window again, telling her to roll it down, and she stares at me for a moment, then rolls it down.
As the window goes down, I reach my hand in and grab the book in her hand. “You’re still reading this shit?” I hold the cover up, it has some guy on the front of it, and I read the back. A romance book. Of course it is.
