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“Oh, honey. I could’ve told you that years ago,” Kate said.
Kristina ate a big bite of pizza, giving her thoughts a moment to gel. How could it have been so blatant to Kate when Kristina had only just realized it for herself? “So, then, what should I do? Should I push Noah to try for more or stick with just friends?”
“I can’t tell you that,” Kate said, a sympathetic look on her face. “You gotta decide what would be harder to live with—not going for it and him eventually falling in love with someone else, or going for it and it changing things between you.”
“Yeah,” Kristina said, her stomach falling at the idea of either outcome. “The question is, how do I make that decision?” And did she have to make it before her date with Ethan?
A flash of bright light. And then the blast hit Noah in the chest, lifting his innards and slamming them back down again. Voices echoed somewhere beyond the piercing ringing in his ears. His chest hurt. His back. His head. Like he’d just gotten kicked by a horse, if a horse had a foot that could cover his whole body.
Noah tried to push himself up, but the world was spinning. His eyes were blurry, flashing, totally fucked up. That ringing made him want to puke.
“Fender!” he called, though his tongue was thick in his mouth. With sand. With blood. The guy had been right next to him. Where was he? “Fender!”
Noah gasped and opened his eyes. For a long moment, the scene in his head was interwoven with the reality of his dark room. And then he was all there. In the quiet stillness of his bedroom, safe in Virginia.
Quiet except for his rasping breath.
Wetness on his face. Noah wiped at his forehead, his eyes, his ears. In a panic, he went for the light. His gaze went right to his hands.
Clear moisture covered his palms. Sweat.
Not blood. It wasn’t blood.
Dull pain pulsed through Noah’s skull. As he pushed out of bed, the room spun around him. The pain clamped down harder, heavier. Noah groaned and weaved through his bedroom door and into the bathroom. He lost the rest of the vision he had in his left eye as wavy lines appeared behind his right.
Fuck, migraine.
He’d had just enough time to complete that thought before he was heaving his guts into the toilet.
Not that there was much to heave. He’d eaten almost nothing yesterday, but that didn’t stop his body from trying. When the nausea finally passed, he took some meds and dragged his ass back to bed, where he stayed for almost twenty-four hours until the pain finally released him from its prison.
Not that he ever truly got free.
When he could finally pull himself from bed, he was surprised to find it was early Tuesday morning. And he was equally surprised to find that he had no messages or missed calls from Kristina.
Fuck.
How are you? Not letting himself debate it, he let the text message fly her way.
In the kitchen, Noah stumbled through making the coffee, then half lay on the kitchen counter while he waited for it to brew. Slowly, the fragrant brown liquid filled the pot, and Noah grabbed a coffee cup from the cabinet. There was nothing special about the plain dark blue ceramic he’d picked out, except that it made him remember shopping with Kristina.
They’d had a good day together. Normal. Easy.
Then he’d gone and fucked it all up by getting jealous over her date.
And, holy hell, he’d been…disproportionately angry. The news of her date had just taken him by such surprise. And she’d looked so excited.
Like a fucking child, Noah had been pissed because he wasn’t the one to make her look that way.
And then she’d called the guy hot. It was like Noah was a bomb and someone had clipped the red wire. He’d been all but ready to explode.
Right up until she announced she was leaving.
By then, it was too late. His shit had ruined their evening
. And she’d rebuffed every one of his admittedly stilted efforts to get them talking again.
Noah poured the coffee and took a nice long sip.
