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“Well, you don’t need to know about João then, and if that makes me a bitch, then—”
“I got into a fucking fight because I like you, all right?!” I shouted, unable to stop because, fuck, I needed to know what she was doing with João. I needed to know how much fucking money I had to spend to get rid of his ass, to get him off my girl. “I fucking like you, Vera.”
ChapterThirty-Six
VERA
“Wh-what?” I whispered, turning my head to face Blaise.
I must have heard him wrong. He couldn’t have actually said that. There was no way.
With a slice of pizza halfway to his mouth, he stopped and turned toward me with a soft expression on his face. He didn’t make a move to take back what he had said, but he didn’t seem to want to say anything more.
“No,” I said, suddenly sitting up and looking down upon him. “Tell me you’re lying.”
For years, I had waited for someone to show even the slightest bit of interest in me. I wanted to feel like the girls did in the books I wrote, but all I felt now was fear. I dropped my pizza, wrapped my arms around myself, and shook my head, unable to believe it. Notwantingto believe it.
“Blaise,” I whispered, scrambling to my feet and turning away from him, “you’re lying to me, right? You have to be lying to me. It was a joke. A funny joke that I … that has to be it, right? You’ve always made bad jokes like that.”
Hell, Blaisenevermade jokes like that.
I’d dreamed that the day a boy told me that he liked me, I would feel butterflies in my stomach, warmth would burst through my chest, and I’d be the happiest damn girl alive.
Right now though, none of this made sense.
Blaise Harleen didn’t like me. He couldn’t.
Blaise Harleen could like anyone else. Literallyanyone.
Even though he had a slice of pizza in his hand, he sat up, opened the pizza box, and stared into it emptily. At some point when I had asked him if this was all a joke, his soft expression had fallen.
“Yeah.” He tossed his slice of pizza into the box and chuckled. “It’s a joke. Chill out.”
“Blaise,” I whispered.
So many thoughts and emotions were rushing through me. While I had practically begged him to admit to me that it was a joke, when he’d actually said it … I wanted him to take the words back. I wanted them to be both the truth and a lie at the same time.
“You think I would actually fall for you, V?” He laughed coldly, standing and grabbing his skateboard. “Don’t kid yourself. I’m the guy holding your little smutty stories over your head and blackmailing you with them.”
But something about the way he’d said it, about the sudden coldness in his voice …
He towered over my smaller frame and showed no remorse on his face, no sadness or pity. I stared up at him, wanting to push him away from me, wanting to pull him closer, wanting to kiss his face and then run away from him.
Fourteen years ago, I’d liked Blaise, too, but his parents had to ruin my life. And then I had gone on hating him for as long as I could. Only bad things came whenever I liked him, whenever we got too close.
My stomach twisted, and I fought the urge to hurl up the pizza.
If I told him how I felt back—how I really felt deep down—then he would hurt me.
Blaise was a playboy, a bad boy, a player who had probably slept with half of Redwood Academy by now, including the teachers. And I was just a nerdy good girl who wanted to be unseen.
He wouldn’t change for me. That only happened in my books.
ChapterThirty-Seven
BLAISE
Ahalf hour later, I gritted my teeth and walked down an aisle at Walmart, trotting behind Vera. Her straight dark brown hair bounced slightly around her shoulders, the scent of her strawberry shampoo drifting behind her.
