“Even?”
“Itwasmy favorite shirt.”
The tone—it was his flirting tone. Playful, casual, rumbly in his throat. Everything about this moment was too familiar, from the soft fluff of his dark hair to the spontaneous nosebleed that was slowingdown its flow. The same, as if nothing had changed.Nothing’s changed about me, I wanted to tell him.I still fall asleep during movies, and I still put chocolate on my popcorn, and I still love?—
“Even,” I forced myself to say, a hard line through my thoughts. “Right, because me ruining your shirt is totally the same as you dumping me the day you left for ASU. Right.” I grabbed onto that anger, digging my fingers around that rope as if it were the only thing keeping me tethered. “Good luck with your nosebleed. Hopefully you don’t bleed out.”
“I missed you,” Dalton said before I could turn away, saying the three words he had to have known would stop me in my tracks. “I texted you a few times, but you never replied.”
“I—I blocked your number.”
Really, Nellie had blocked his number. She’d deleted the contact after that, and I’d had no way of finding it again, not without being obvious and asking someone for it.
“I figured you might’ve.” He lowered his tissue, and the area underneath his nose was still red from the pressure. In contrast, and in the dim hallway, his eyes were so, so blue. “I deserved to be blocked after everything that happened.”
It’s been fun.
I just don’t think this long-distance thing will work out, not how we hope. It’s better to give ourselves both a clean break here.
It’s a little silly to hear you talk about NYU like you’ll go.
“I don’t really know what I was thinking, letting go of the best thing in my life.” Dalton reached for my hand that was in a fist at my side, gently wrapping his fingers around it. “But I missed you, DD. You have no idea.”
Boom. A blast to the flimsy little wall I’d put up. The nickname only he called me among the words I’d dreamt of him saying. Sure, he wasn’t climbing the tree in my backyard and throwing stones at my window, but he was still saying them.I missed you. I don’t know what I was thinking, letting go of the best thing in my life. I missed you.
I could feel my resolve crumbling, exactly how Jamie and Nellie were worried it would. Exactly how I’d known it would.
“It’s karma,” I finally got out, but my voice was weak. “Missing me so much after you dumped me so cruelly.”
“Let me make it up to you,” Dalton entreated, taking a half step closer. The heat from his body seeped through his clothes, washing over me like a heady scent of cologne. My head swam with it, heart pounding along with the beat of the music downstairs. “Let me beg for forgiveness.” He leaned closer, close enough to kiss.
In that moment, I couldn’t remember what the heartbreak had been like—not really. The times I’d cried myself to sleep faded into the background of my mind, replaced with the desperate longing that had my body swaying forward. I remembered how loved I’d felt in his arms, with his lips on mine, and chased that feeling. In that moment, it didn’t matter how casually cruel he’d been when he dumped me. It didn’t matter that he’d given me a box ofour relationship as if it were nothing more than a bundle of garbage.
All that mattered was that Dalton Giovanni wanted me again.
“You know we’re meant to be together,” Dalton murmured, words barely cutting through the fog in my mind. “I’m home for the summer. Let’s pick up where we left off. Dump him and be with me.”
I blinked, dizzy, as if I’d been drinking something other than Sprite. “Dump… who?” Dalton’s forehead was close enough that if he leaned forward another inch, it’d touch my own.Kiss me,I thought, and felt guilty for thinking it, but the want was too great.
Kiss me, kiss me, kiss me.
“Jamie.”
I’d forgotten what we were talking about in that split second. “Jamie?” I wrenched back, looking into Dalton’s expression, but he wasn’t teasing. No joke. “Jamie?”
“I saw you the other day. In Jefferson. Even before I came up to you at the ice cream shop. Holding hands, laughing together.” Dalton reached up and traced a fingertip down my jaw, but I was too stiff to shiver. “I get it. He was probably there for you… after everything. But you don’t want him, DD. Not like that. You know you don’t.”
Dalton had seen me with Jamie that day in Jefferson—and thought we were out on adate? He thought Jamie and I weretogether, the same way the two downstairs had thought we were together.
Dalton was right about one thing—Ididn’twant Jamie. Not in the way I wanted him.
But Dalton was right about another thing—Jamiehadbeen there for me after everything. Both he and Nellie had been there, helping me pick up the pieces of my heart I couldn’t bear to gather. Their encouragements still echoed in my mind, and so did the lie I’d told them.I’m so over Dalton Giovanni.
They’d gone through hell with me, and here I was, nearly choosing to make a return trip.
And they were my best friends. Even if I didn’t want them to, they’d follow me down.
With that thought bolstering me, I closed my eyes. “Jamieisbetter than you.” The knife-like words cut their way out of me, and though painful, I knew they were true. I yanked my hand out of Dalton’s. “He never would’ve treated me the way you did.”
