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It’d been the hardest thing I’d ever done to enter the kitchen Thanksgiving morning and act as if nothing had changed between us when I saw him sitting at the table, heartbreakingly handsome and worriedly uncertain as he looked up at me. I knew what he’d been afraid of, that I’d kick him out or get him fired before he’d even started working for my dad. But I would never do that to him. So I had pretended things were exactly the same between us so he’d know we were still friends.
We were still friends. That was the rub. Somehow, in less than two weeks of knowing the guy, I had fallen for him. But I couldn’t let him in on that fact because he was my friend. I needed to stop being selfish and thinking only of my loneliness and secret desires, and I needed to focus on what he needed, which certainly wasn’t a girlfriend. Not during this phase of his life. He needed to rediscover himself and heal from the wreck Melody Fairfield had turned his world into.
But then he’d confessed that he didn’t want to be separated from me right before I’d left, and it made my heart clang madly in my chest, wondering if maybe he had felt something more in our kiss, just as I had. Maybe it hadn’t been an obligation for him, after all.
Except he’d followed the admission with practical logic of why we wouldn’t work.
So, yeah, that was why I’d waited until I was in my car and five miles from my family’s farm before I burst into tears and cried the rest of the way home. And I hadn’t been the same since.
“You miss Beck,” Tess repeated more quietly this time as she grounded me back to the present where we sat in class, paying no attention of the professor’s droning voice and trying our best to ignore the two girls behind us who were currently whispering about my lying-for-rapists ways.
We were halfway through the fall semester’s dead week. I only had three finals the next week to take before winter break would begin. Last year, I’d gone home for the entire break, but this year, Vivian had given me more hours at the shop, so I wasn’t yet sure when I’d make it back home to see him again, which made the ache spread.
I really did miss him.
But I quietly muttered, “You’re crazy,” to my best friend anyway.
Because it was crazy to miss him. I’d known the guy less than a month. And yes, maybe I’d invited him to sleep in my bed with me way too soon after meeting him, especially after seeing him get kinky with some other girl. And maybe I’d experienced moments of connection with him that made me feel closer to him than I ever had to anyone. And sure, maybe, I’d hugged him, and smiled at him, and been softer with him than I was with anyone else, but…
Shit, I forgot where I was going with all this.
Maybe I was the only crazy facet in this whole situation.
Tess leaned closer to me, lowering her voice. “It’s okay to miss him, you know. You guys were…” She shrugged helplessly. “Close.”
“Shh,” I hissed, frowning. “I’m trying to pay attention to the lecture.”
“There is no lecture. He’s just reviewing everything we’ve already learned this semester.”
Well if that was the case… “Then what the hell are we still doing here?” I slammed my book closed and pushed to my feet, gaining the attention of the rest of the class.
Tess gaped at me. The bitches behind us stopped gossiping. The teacher paused mid-speech to focus on me.
“Yes?” he asked.
“I just remembered,” I told him, stuffing my textbook and notepad into my backpack before slinging it over my shoulder. “I don’t want to be here.” Then I glanced at Tess. “You coming?”
She silently mouthed my name, her face turning as red as her hair. I only shrugged, so she hurried to collect her things and follow me.
Of course, she didn’t want to leave with me, but it would’ve been more embarrassing for her to stay behind, so she rushed after me as I strolled out of the room, waving farewell to the professor and thanking him for a stimulating semester.
Once we cleared the building, Tess slapped her hand to her chest, hurrying to keep pace with me. “I can’t believe you just…why the heck did you do that?”
I answered honestly. “I’m not sure. I just couldn’t be there any longer.”
Tess’s eyes filled with sympathy. “It’ll get better. Soon, some other hot piece of gossip will distract everyone and they’ll forget they ever called you all those evil names.”
I only shrugged. “Whatever. It doesn’t matter.” Because it didn’t.
“Well, something is definitely bothering you. You haven’t been right since you came back from Thanksgiving…without Beckett.”
I glanced at her warningly. Maybe it hadn’t been such a good idea to drag her along with me when I’d left class.
“Did you two have a fight?” she pressed.
With a snort, I shook my head. My car was across campus, but I took a slight detour toward the food court because I knew this was Jonah’s lunch hour. Tess didn’t even notice. “Of course not.”
“So this funk you’re going through is about the fact you fell in love with him and can’t admit it to yourself, then?”
