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“I know myself perfectly,” I counter. “I know that you took the most important thing in the world from me. Do you even feel bad about what happened, Theo? Do you regret any of it? Do you evenmissher?”
In the blink of an eye, Theo’s face becomes a mask of rage so tumultuous and powerful that it almost matches my own. “Of course I fucking miss her!” he snaps. “I miss her every fucking day. I miss her more than you can possibly imagine. You don’t have the market cornered on grief, y’know. God, you can be such a spoiled little brat sometimes.”
This accusation is a slap in the face. It stings like hell. My face grows hot, my blood rising to my cheeks. I’m so outraged that I want to strike back, to bite him, to scratch his eyes out, to cut his skin so viciously that I hit bone, but I don’t have the words to hurt him as effectively as he’s hurt me—I’ve been completely robbed of the ability to speak. It’s a shame Theo hasn’t. He leans toward me, his lips pressed into a flat line, and for the first time I see real, true pain in his gold-threaded eyes. I’m stunned by the weight of his gaze on my skin.
“Rachel was precious to me. You’ll never fucking know what she meant to me. You walk around this place with your nose in the air, acting like such a fucking victim, but you’re not the only one who’s suffered through all of this. Do you really think you’re the only one who wakes up in the middle of the night, feeling like they can’t breathe? Do you think you’re the only one who’s been fucking crushed by this? I can’t even look at myself in the mirror. You can hate me to the very depths of your soul, until you feel like it’s eating you alive, but I can guarantee you right now that you will never hate me as much as I hate myself. Now tell me about the people in that fucking photo, Sorrell!”
I blink at him, wrecked by the words he just lashed at me…and utterly confused by his last command. “What the hell are you talking about? I don’t know a thing about them! They’re not real!”
He sets his jaw. “Yes, they are.”
“It’s a stock photo! They’re just models Gaynor found online. She downloaded a picture of a family having lunch on a beach and replaced the girl in the image with me. Why is that so difficult for you to understand?”
Theo’s hands turn into fists. “You’re so goddamn stubborn,” he hisses.
“If I annoy you so fucking much…if you loved Rachel so much…” I gasp, fighting to speak. When did I startcrying? I hiccup, trying to rein in the wash of emotion sweeping over me, but it’s no good. It’s too much for me. Bigger than me. More powerful than I can contend with. “If you loved her so much, then why are you even here?” I grit out. “How could you sleep with me last night?”
If Rachel meant so much to me, then how couldIsleep withhimlast night? The question burns a blazing trail through my mind, obliterating every other thought. This is the crux of it—this question right here, the true source of my anger. I hate Theo but…Rachel was my friend. I’ve fought like hell to ignore what I feel—this undeniable attraction I have toward Theo. I’ve railed against it day and night, trying to push it away, to reject it out of hand, but it doesn’t matter what I do. I still feel it, every waking moment of every day, and I can’t escape it. What I feel for him goes beyond simple attraction. There are plenty of other hot guys at Toussaint, but they don’t plague my thoughts and keep me from sleep. I don’t think about them twenty-four seven. I don’t crave or need them the way I crave and need Theo. What I feel for him goes well beyond attraction. It’s a pull in the pit of my belly. A hunger I don’t have a name for. A desperation and an urgency for him that makes no sense and scares me half to death every time I try and face it.
Theo is the living embodiment of frustration when he says, “Rachel’s gone, Sorrell. I had to accept that a long time ago.Youare here.” He seems to struggle with what to say next. “Youare alive.Youare in my life. God forgive me, but I can’t help it if I love you, too.”
This is too much to bear. “You don’t love me. You don’t know the meaning of the fucking word.”
He laughs a bitter laugh. “I know the meaning of it intimately.”
“Then how can you sit there and tell me that you loved her and in the same breath tell me that you loveme?It isn’t possible. I don’t want to hear it!”
“That’s the problem, isn’t it? You just don’t wanna face the truth.”
“Get the fuck out of my room before I start screaming.”
I think he’s going to fight me on this. Whenhasn’the fought me when I’ve told him to do something? But Theo gets up from the bed. Cold moonlight, pouring in through the huge picture window by the bed, paints his pale skin a deathly silver as he regards me. “You know it’s true. And you feel it, too. Deny it all you li—”
“Oh, believe me. I fucking will. You’re delusional.” Even as I say this, I’m torn apart by the urge to run my hands through his hair, to sweep his unruly locks out of his face. I want to feel the thickness of it, and to twine the waves of it through my fingers. I want to crawl into his lap and cry into his chest; it’s as if the circle of his arms is the only safe place left on Earth. Such a cruel and bitter lie.
The guilt is unbearable.
I want to run from the hateful things he’s saying to me, but I can’t. The truth of it all destroys me, though Theo hasn’t voiced the one truth that hurts me the most. I dodge around the thought, trying not to let it take shape in my mind, but the knowledge has a mind of its own. And it wants to be heard.
I wasjealous.
Listening to him talk of his grief, and how deeply he loved Rachel, made me want to crawl out of my fucking skin. It made the vicious nausea from the Plan B riot until it was all I could think about. HelovedRachel. It’s an irrefutable fact. I saw it on his face and heard it in his voice. And hearing him say that hurt.I’ve never known shame this bitter.
Theo moves to the end of the bed, and some wretched, terrible part of me suddenly doesn’t want him to go. How can I feel this way, so conflicted and torn, when my path should be so clear? God, I just want to curl into a ball and stop breathing. If that would take this confusion and pain away, then I’d gladly surrender myself to oblivion.
“Lani told me about the Plan B. Don’t be mad at her,” he says, cutting me off sharply when I sit bolt upright in the bed. “She’s just worried about you. She just wants to help. I only came here to see if you were all right.”
My eyes prick, welling with a fresh influx of tears. I don’t know why it matters that Theo knows about the pill I took. He was there last night. He fucked me. He came inside me, and he knows we stupidly didn’t use any protection. It’s obvious that something would need to be done in order to mitigate any disastrous consequences because of what we did. But the embarrassment of him learning about me taking something from Lani just…it fucking guts me for some reason. I throw my hands in the air, letting them fall down into my lap—a show of pure resignation. “Great. I’m so glad you did. As you can see, I’m perfectly fine. You can leave now that you’ve eased your conscience.”
His eyes are full of steel and annoyance. “My conscience is clear. I wouldn’t have cared if you hadn’t taken it.”
“Oh, please, Theo! What guy screws a girl and doesn’t want to make sure he’s not gonna be paying child support for—”
“Enough,” he says quietly. “I told you. I wouldn’t have cared. I know that shit has crappy side effects sometimes, so I came to make sure you were okay.”
I don’t know what to make of this statement. I truly don’t. “Well. I’m not throwing my guts up if that’s what you mean,” I say bitterly. “But am I okay?” I shake my head, desperately clinging on to what little sanity I have left. “No. I can’t say that I’mokay.”
For a second, I think he’s going to come to me. The tortured look on his face indicates that he will. And for that split-second, his comforting embrace is all I want in the world. He drags his hands back through his hair, blowing a strained breath out of his nose. And then he looks at me. “I know. I’m really sorry.”
