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Wes frowned. “They’re your friends too.”
“Are they?” I probed.
Ryan and Jamie straightened.
Wes pushed himself between us. “What’s going on?”
“Jamie and Ryan seem to think I’m the reason you crashed your car. Because you saw me going in the bathroom with that girl.” I laid it out.
“We didn’t exactly say that.” Ryan hedged.
Wes made an angry sound, spinning to put his back to me and face his friends. “Seriously? Why would you put something like that on him? It was an accident. It was no one’s fault. Especially not Max’s.”
“You should have seen your face,” Jamie said, voice low and deep. “The second he disappeared… it was like something in you broke.”
His words were a blow to my chest, the sudden stabbing pain ebbing into a hollow ache that made it hard to draw in a complete breath. Truth was I also blamed myself for his accident. For what I did, how I acted. I know what I did hurt him deeply, and it was something I was going to have to live with the rest of my life. Even if I didn’t sleep with that girl, the damage was still done. I owed him an explanation for that. I owed him a sincere apology.
“Even still, that’smybusiness!” Wes snapped. “Just because you thought you knew, I never told anyone about my feelings for Max, so they were my responsibility and no one else’s. Not his. Not yours.Mine.I left the diner. I got in my car. Yeah, I was upset, but that’s not why I crashed. So don’teverput something like that on him again. Some words can’t ever be unheard.”
Dismissing Ryan and Jamie, he spun to me, bunching his fist in my jacket. “What happened is not your fault.” When I said nothing, he gave me a shake. “Max. That accident was not your fault.”
“But hurting you was.”
The echo of that very pain floated behind his eyes before it disappeared.
“Sometimes I wonder how you love me at all after all the hurt I’ve caused you,” I whispered.
Rage flickered in his eyes. Releasing me, he spun, facing off with the swimmers. “Real friends would never hurt someone I love like this.”
Ryan’s stare narrowed. “Real friends aren’t afraid to call out another friend for acting like a dick.”
“Max is not a dick.” He fumed.
That’s how I knew his love was real. So real that my chest actually swelled with it. I never thought hearing someone declare I wasn’t a dick could mean so much to me. But it did.
Because I was a dick.
A giant one.
But he defended me still.
Wrapping an arm around him, I pulled him into my chest, anchoring his back to my front. “I love you for defending me, baby,” I rumbled against his ear. “But we both know I’m a dick.”
Ryan and Jamie both smiled.
“They still can’t say that to you!” Wes refuted, still pissed.
He was so cute.
“I’m hardly innocent. I threatened them at the hospital.”
Wes gasped, spinning in my hold to stare at me. “You did what?”
“I’ll erase you from his life,” Jamie intoned darkly. It was very Darth Vader-ish.
“I do not sound like that,” I snapped.
“Bro. You do,” Jamie argued.
