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“Baby,” my mom says at the same time that Dad tells me to go ahead and leave.
The table shakes slightly as I get up and don’t say another word, taking the escape Dad gave me.
I head straight to my room, wanting to sleep this night off until I can see Nathan tomorrow and try to make it right.
“Let her be. She’s a teenager,” I hear my dad say as I climb the stairs, holding on to the etched wood banister as I go.
My parents met when they were kids, but I don’t think they’d understand. I don’t even think they’d approve. So I don’t tell them anything and maybe that was a mistake.
* * *
I never did tellmy family that I’d fallen in love only to have my heart shredded in a way that was unimaginable. I think my mom knew though. She could always tell when something was wrong. Maybe that’s why she hovered so much my senior year. Maybe it’s why she wants me to stay close. I’m her baby and I always will be.
Some things I can’t share with her though.
It’s a story that’s just meant for Nathan and me.
I wish I’d known how to talk to him back then. I wish I’d been smarter and known what he needed without relying on him to tell me.
Things could have turned out so much differently if we’d only known how to handle each other. But we came from different worlds and that was something we couldn’t help.
CHAPTER7
Nathan
My eyes look back at me from the mirror which is in the dead center of my dressing room. I haven’t noticed how red they are; I haven’t noticed the bags.
Three days of failed takes and threats of being pulled. Three days of Mark begging me to tell him what’s wrong, so he can fix it before I’m fired.
Three days of me feeling like I’m eighteen again. Because I’m avoiding her. I’m a fucking coward for doing it, but I know she’ll break me. She’ll bring me back to the exact thing I’ve been running from.
It was so easy to just live when I didn’t have a reminder of my past.
“You want to do something fun?” she’d asked me. She always asked me that. There was a sparkle in her eyes when she did it, too. Like she knew she’d get me into trouble. I can just see her whispering it off the set. I can see her luring me back to what we used to be and picture how she used to look at me. That desire in her eyes was the most addicting thing I’ve ever seen, ever felt. The taste of her lips and the feel of her curves as she moaned into my mouth is something I’ll never have enough of. It’ll be that question that pushes me to take my last breath.
September 17
“You want to do something fun?”she asks as she tucks her hair behind her ear. Her backpack shifts on her shoulder and she hitches it up as the bell rings again. The third and final bell.
Everyone’s on their way out. The hallways are crowded and occasionally someone brushes against Harlow. She sways easily, seemingly not to notice. But I notice and it pisses me off. There’s plenty of room to go around her. And I hate that they’re distracting her in the least.
“What do you think?” she asks me and my gaze is drawn back to her.
Her eyes are the lightest shade of blue I think I’ve ever seen but there’s a sparkle in them, and it reflects back at me as I stare at her. I let it last too, not saying a word and just letting her flirtatious suggestion hang in the air between us. It makes the tension grow and I live for that. For weeks she’s been pushing me, asking little questions she already knows the answers to, just to say something to me.
She’s playing with fire; she already knows that. But what she doesn’t know is how damaging she’d be to me. The things I want to do to her and the depths I’d sink to in order to have her to myself. I’m no good for her, that’s nothing new. But I want to make her mine and she can’t know that. If she did, she’d be happy to let us burn together.
“The bell rang,” I tell her just to say something and get my mind off her.
“I heard,” she says as I start walking to the exit. She follows me, refusing to take the hint. “So, let’s go do something.”
Everything in me is screaming at me to just tell her to go home.
“I’m just going home,” I tell her and watch as disappointment temporarily dulls the brightness of her eyes. But she’s not the type of girl to take no for an answer.
“Are you walking?” she asks.
“Yeah,” I tell her and shut my locker.
