Page 82 of These Secret Years

“You wanna give me a few?”

“Not really. What’s the point? You do your thing, I do mine. Not to take away from anything that happened. I had fun.”

“Fun,” he repeats flatly.

“We both have lives⁠—”

“Obviously. And this is what you want to be doing with yours?”

“Is that judgment?”

He shakes his head, but then he sighs. “Maybe. But not like I think you’re going to hell, more like you can do better, I guess.”

“Ha. Well, this is working for me right now.”

“You and Chelsea, though?”

“We’re still together. We’re just not exclusive.”

“And that’s okay with you?”

“It kinda has to be since I was the one who stepped out first, but also, yeah, it’s fine. I don’t need to be anyone’s one and only.”

“What do you…? Never mind.”

I want to let Knight off the hook. He certainly didn’t mean to walk in on this. He probably showed up at the party for exactly the reason he said—peer pressure—and I think he did just come up to say hi. We didn’t have much, but as little as I’ll let myself remember it, I really do think we had something, and I appreciate that he’s man enough to acknowledge that. “I’m okay,” I tell him, answering the question he asked before Harrison’s knock came. “It’s easy money, and it’s helping me deal with some shit from my past, which I don’t want to get into, but Chelsea knows, and she wouldn’t let me do anything that was too self-destructive. She’s a good person. She cares about me.”

Knight nods. “It’s good you have each other. I’m sorry—I’ve just never seen anything like this. Maybe I’m naive as fuck, but I didn’t realize shit like this went on at college.”

“A school this big? You’d be surprised what all goes on. It’s kinda like I told you this summer—there are plenty of people here that can keep a secret.”

“I guess we’ve all got ‘em, huh?”

I laugh softly, but the sound has zero mirth. “Yeah. We do. The interesting ones anyway.”

“You didn’t lose my number, did you?”

I shake my head.

“If you ever need anything.”

Fuck, is this it? Am I okay with that if it is? A wave of missing him hits hard, threatening to knock me off the spot I’ve staked out on the floor. At this point in my life, I don’t have in me what it would take to be jealous. In fact, I think the farther he stays away from me, the better. He’s got a whole, beautiful future in front of him while I feel like my life is headed on a downward trajectory. Like I’m gonna crash hard at some point and only then will I be able to rise from whatever ashes are left. I find myself looking forward to both, and in a way, racing toward the crash.

Like I can’t self-destruct fast enough, but my foot is constantly on the brake, too. One of these days, maybe the “fuck it” will override the fear, but they’re in a nasty fight, and neither is showing signs of fatigue.

“It was good to see you,” I say.

He laughs out loud. “Really?”

Yeah, I want to say. Like really, really good. He’s got so much sweetness in him. When I left Sunrise Point, I was worried I’d hurt him somehow. Damaged him. The memory hits with dizzying clarity. That last night was—it was kind of beautiful, and it was what I held on to so tight until I was buried so deep in Adrian’s world again, I couldn’t even see the surface, much less anything even close to beautiful. “Yeah. Don’t be a stranger. Okay?”

“I could say the same thing.”

“Are you, though?” I ask.

“Just because what happened has to be a secret, doesn’t mean I regret it,” he says.

I swallow hard. As out of touch as I am with my emotions, sometimes something gets to me. Wallops me right in the chest, and I should have known it would be him. “Good luck with the rest of your season.”