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“About how I quit the football team? You told him everything I said?”
“No! I didn’t tell him anything about you quitting.” That, at least, was true. I danced around the issue as much as I could when Mr. Manning had brought it up. “It’s not like it’snotpublic knowledge, Reed. You haven’t been playing. You’re not wearing your jersey on homecoming.”
Reed turned to peer across the street, as if he couldn’t look directly at me. “What were you talking about, then?”
“I…redesigned his website. We were going over the final things.”
There. One of the secrets I’d been keeping for weeks was finally out there, right in the open. I’d been so caught up in imagining what would’ve happened if Rachel found out everything that I hadn’t stopped to think about what Reed’s reaction would be. Rachel would’ve rained hellfire. Reed, however, just looked betrayed.
And it cut deeper than I thought it would’ve.
“When did you start that? Have you been working on it this whole time?”
The definition of “this whole time” was hard to nail down, but I knew what he meant.Since our kiss?“He asked me the day after the list came out.”
“And you said yes? Just like that?” That distrust returned to his gaze as he looked at me. “This is one of the secrets you were talking about the other night, right? Jeez, Ava, I didn’t realize I was included in the list of people you kept things from.”
The words themselves weren’t designed to be piercing, but they cut through me anyway, mostly it’s because he was the one person who’d been able to see practically everything these past few weeks. “I’m sorry,” I got out, swallowing hard. “I thought I could use the money to help Mom out and keep her from selling the house. I—I thought if I could pitch in, it’d take some of her stress off. And then your dad said he’d recommend my work to his friends, and I—I figured that I could work on the website and then be done with him.”
“You figured that you could do it and never say anything, right?” Reed blinked quickly, chest jumping with a sudden breath in. “You knew what he did. You knew how it hurt my family. And yet you worked with him anyway? After what happened between you and me?”
“You were the one who pulled me aside and said the kiss was meaningless to you,” I shot back, my desperation spinning into something that resembled anger. The leftover frustration that’d come from the argument with Rachel had been yet another emotion I’d buried, and here it was, resurfacing at the worst time. It was too much to think around. “You said so yourself—it was apity kiss. I didn’t realize what I did would matter to you.”
Reed flinched, the wince knifing across his expression. He had to have known that I overheard last night, since I practically walked in on Cindy and his conversation, but then again, after waiting all day for a text from him, it never came. Babble after Babble submission, sure, but no text. “Ava,” he began, in a slow way that made my cheeks hot.
“Don’t try to make me feel less embarrassed,” I told him tightly, squeezing my laptop with knuckles that began to ache. “Because it’s true, no matter how much I wish it weren’t. No matter how it felt to me.”
Reed’s voice was lower than before when he asked, “How did it feel to you?”
Like a pencil under pressure, I felt something snap inside of me—not anger, not the defensiveness that’d swamped through me moments ago. No, this was something in my chest, something suffocating. “It doesn’t matter, because you and me… We began and ended with that kiss.”
And everything else after the fact was just a bonus chapter.
I brought the strap of my laptop bag over my head and rested it against my hip, lifting my chin up. “I have to go. I’m supposed to be at Maisie’s house in ten minutes.”
Reed reached out for my wrist again when I moved to step past him, eyes wide. “Ava.”
I once more pulled from his grip, looking him square in the eye. “I’m sorry for working with your dad. I’ll come clean to Rachel, so you don’t feel like you have to keep it from her.”
I brushed past him, holding my breath like that would hold back the tears that burned my eyes. They hadn’t fallen yet, which was a feat in itself, but I had to be seconds away. It was frustration and pain that raged inside me, as unforgiving as a storm.
“I liked it.” The words came from Reed in a rushed breath, like he was desperate to get them out before he lost the nerve. They rang in the air, and I was grateful he couldn’t see my face, because my eyes widened like they were about to pop out of my head. “It wasn’t a pity kiss—I didn’t mean that when I said it. The kiss… Our kiss. I liked it.”
This was a moment I’d wondered about—worried about—on a near constant level. The situation, though, had always been reversed. It was me calling out to Reed, confessing the thoughts that’d played on a loop. It was Reed who had his back to me, and Reed who ultimately turned me down.
But here we were, with Reed saying things that did the exact opposite of what I’d always wanted. They didn’t comfort me. They didn’t make me smile.
Maybe he did think about the kiss, but he didn’t think aboutme.
“We should stop here, then,” I said without turning. “Before it gets worse.”
“You’re saying that because you’re afraid.” Reed’s shoes crunched over the gravel in the alleyway as he took a step closer. “You told me yourself, you wanted to get the early relationships out of the way. The meaningless ones. Like Josh. You’re afraid to fall for somethingreal.”
“What about you?” When I whirled around, I felt a hot tear track down my cheek. “You don’t like me.” The sentence came out with a soft scoff, one that made the pain blatantly obvious. “Not like that. You, Reed Manning, are always the one to walk away first. You’re just afraid of someone walking away fromyou.”
Reed clenched his jaw, and if I hadn’t known any better, I would’ve thought his eyes were shining too. His hands hung at his sides, fingers loose and letting the breeze tickle them. I’d never seen him with such an expression on his face, and it stung, knowing that it was all my fault.What a mess, I thought with a woeful sigh, looking around at the tatters of this moment sadly.Indeed, what a mess.
“I’m not walking away,” I told him, hastily swiping at the tear that made its way to my chin. Later, I’d be humiliated for crying again in front of him, but right then, it was the last thing I cared about. “I’m stopping before someone gets hurt.”And before my heart breaks more than it already has.
