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Wes nodded easily. “Maybe think about it.”
He kept saying that as if I hadn’t been thinking nonstop about Lars for months. As if this conversation didn’t just skewer me with absolution and declare a winner of the agonizing war inside me.
No. I didn’t need to think about it.
I already knew.
22
Lars
I was notdisappointed when Wes’s bright-yellow Rubicon pulled up and Win wasn’t inside.
I was epically disappointed. To the point where my usually stoic ass wanted to stomp on the sidewalk and refuse to get in the car. I actually stood there and debated like a toddler, trying to decide whether a meltdown would get me what I wanted.
“We can’t actually go to the party until you areinthe car.”
My head snapped up to where Max was leaning out the driver’s window, his leather-covered arm thrown up on the doorframe.
“Right.” I agreed, heading for the back seat.
“Win will be there.” His low voice stopped me just before I climbed in.
I stared at the back of the driver’s seat, trying not to feel everything I was feeling. “Yes, I’m sure we will find him in the center of a horde of women, flashing those dimples,” I said without inflection, shutting the door behind me and reaching for the seatbelt.
Max’s dark stare was impossible to ignore even from the rearview mirror. “Maybe you should give him a taste of his own medicine.”
“Max,” Wes hissed, reaching over to smack his shoulder.
“Payback, baby,” Max said, sounding mighty smug.
I didn’t know what that meant, and I didn’t care. I turned to stare out the dark window as Max threw the Jeep into drive.
“Did you go to parties much in Sweden?” Wes asked.
“No,” I said, not offering more details. I stopped going to parties right after I started dating Oskar. He always wanted to stay in, said he didn’t want to share me with anyone. I didn’t realize until it was too late it was just his way of isolating me. His way of controlling me.
One night he went out with friends and expected me to stay at home. I went out anyway and didn’t tell him. He showed up at the party…
Don’t think about it.
I never went to a party again. They weren’t my thing anyway. Too loud. Too wild. Too many people.
Yet here I was in the back of what Max affectionately called Wes’s yellow bus and on my way to the thing I didn’t like.
To be fair, though, I didn’t like much. Besides, I told myself when I came to Westbrook that I was going to get out of my comfort zone. I would hang out with the team. I would make friends and put myself out there. I would do the things I never got to do.
I’d tried to talk myself out of coming a total of thirty-two times since the swim meet. Yes, I counted. Counting was supposed to be a great way to calm anxiety.
FYI: It wasn’t.
There were two reasons I was here tonight:
1. I didn’t want to explain to anyone why I refused to come.
and
2. Staying home would only make my paranoia worse.
