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Chapter Twenty-Four
Rocco was right.
This. This is what she’d turned me into. This sad piece of shit. This sad piece of shit standing in the dark, in the rain, outside her house like some kind of fucking stalker. I couldn’t help it. I was drawn to her. With all my addictions, she was possibly the worst. The sweetest. The hardest to shake.
I knew I’d let her down. Not turning up to drive her to school that morning. But I couldn’t fucking deal with her post-date. Seeing them together had wrecked me. I thought I’d known anger and pain and the obsessive need to destroy anything until the numbness took over? I’d been naïve until that moment.
They said bad boys ruined good girls for all other blokes?
Fuck that for a joke.
Turns out good girls ruined bad boys for all other chicks.
I lit up my cigarette, taking as much shelter as the tree above me could give.
I didn’t know what the fuck I was going to do with myself.
It all seemed so clear to me now. All the denial I’d been in. And I knew denial when it hit me with the force of a ten-tonne semi. But this was something different.
My heart jumped as I heard a crash, and my eyes flew to her back door. I’d heard it open and close enough over the past few months that I knew what it sounded like. There she was, flying out of it. By the meagre light, I could see she was looking right where I was standing.
“Fuck,” I muttered.
I doused my smoke and tried my best to disappear into the shadows.
“Roman!” she called, and I hated the way my heart jolted every time she did that.
I ignored her.
“Lombardi!” she called, obviously still following me. “ROMAN LOMBARDI!” she screamed.
That halted me in my tracks.
“What?” I snapped as I turned, blinking the rain out of my eyes.
“Don’t what me,” she snapped back. “Where the hell were you this morning?”
“Busy,” I said.
“So, busy you couldn’t even send me a cursory text?”
“I had things to see, people to do.”
“What is wrong with you?” she asked, and I heard her voice crack.
That made me hesitate. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, what is this? What’s going on? You can’t tell me we’re friends and then, no matter how awkward it is, not show up. You can’t have it both ways, Roman.”
“I don’t want it both ways,” I told her, sighing. I couldn’t believe what I was about to say. “Okay, I lied.”
“What?” Her voice was small.
“I lied,” I said as I took a step towards her. “We promised honesty and I broke that promise.”
“How?”
Ugh, never a nancier or wankier word had come out of my mouth. “Because I never wanted you to go out with Carter,” I admitted. It was as much as admission to myself as to her.
