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Ilay curled up in a ball on my bed, completely fucking miserable. Everything hurt.
I asked him not to leave me.But he left me.
My heart was pounding out of my chest. I couldn’t speak, couldn’t fucking breathe. Panic had overtaken my body.
The second the door closed behind Travis, Noah turned to me, choking out the words that I was dreading. “You don’t have to say anything. But this…thing between us needs to stop. I can’t do it anymore. I can’t be your friend with benefits, or your fuck buddy, or whatever you want to call it. I’m sorry.”
No.
My vision grew blurry, and I clenched my fists. What was I supposed to say? How could I make this right? I was no closer to being able to process this thing between us than I had been at the beginning. “Noah. I can’t—”
He blinked back tears, and it hurt so fucking much.I’ddone that.I’dmade him cry.
“It’s okay. I understand. I wish more than anything that I could deal with us being a secret. I’d never, ever force you into anything you weren’t ready for. We need to end this before it ends up hurting us both even more than it already has.”
A tear slipped free. No. It couldn’t end like this. He couldn’t leave me.
I needed him to stay.
“Please. Please don’t leave me,” I begged.
More tears fell from his eyes, brimming with pain and sadness, but he didn’t bother to wipe them away. “I have to, Liam. We can’t…we can’t do this anymore.”
Seeing that devastated look on his face…it was the only way I managed to force out a whispered reply. “You’re right. Okay. It’s over.”
I blinked back more tears. I’d lost someone else.
Lying here in the dark, lonely and hurting, I could admit the truth that I was afraid to speak out loud. Afraid to even think it. Ever since my dad had gone, my deepest fear was that I’d be abandoned again. That was why I held on to the things I loved so possessively, why I was having a hard time coming to terms with the fact that my mum had a new boyfriend. Rationally, I knew that it made no sense, but it didn’t stop it from hurting.
And this time, it was happening because of me. It was 100 percent my fault. Because my head was so screwed up.
Fuck.
I rubbed at my eyes, then pushed myself up and off my bed. Before I could talk myself out of it, I found myself closing my bedroom door behind me and taking the few steps down the hallway to Noah’s room. I curved my fingers around the handle and pushed down.
The door was unlocked, and I stepped inside the darkened room.
Noah raised his gaze to mine, his face illuminated by his laptop screen. His eyes were red and swollen, and Ihatedthat I’d been the one to cause him this pain.
“Could we…maybe…watchAttack on Titan? One last time?” My voice cracked on the words, and I swallowed around the lump in my throat.
He looked at me in silence for a long time, and then finally, he nodded.
I breathed out shakily, padding over to the side of his bed. When I was level with it, he shifted over, making a space for me next to him. He raised his arm in an invitation, and I lay down, wrapping my own arm around him, inhaling his citrusy scent. His body was warm, his chest rising and falling against me as I rested my head against his shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
He pressed his lips to the side of my head in a light, fleeting touch. “Me too,” came his soft reply, laced with sadness.
My eyes filled with tears again as he tugged his laptop closer and hit Play.
We lay there for a long, long time.
* * *
The sky was beginning to lighten when I blinked my eyes open. For a minute, I’d forgotten what had happened, and then everything came rushing back to me.
