AllFreeNovel
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“Time to go?” he asks as he gets up, slips on a pair of boxer briefs, and then sits on the edge of the bed. He’s now looking at me in the way only he does, and it makes my already nervous heart feel ill.
“Yeah, Cora texted a few minutes ago that she scheduled a car service with the hotel.”
“I was hoping we’d have time to grab breakfast,” he says.
“I can’t,” I tell him, weeping on the inside.
He nods while continuing to look at me, and then his head tilts just a tiny bit with worry.
“You okay?”
“Yeah, I’m just a little tired.” I turn and head into the bathroom to brush my teeth and collect my things. Well, collect myself is more like it. I feel like a balloon that’s about to pop.
Clay hasn’t moved when I return to the room, and his eyes track me as I finish getting dressed. Black yoga pants and an oversized hoodie for the win today.
“Come back to the lake with me,” he says. It’s not a question, but it is, and my heart both soars and drops.
Without looking at him, I move to the closet where the dress I wore on stage is hanging with the shoes underneath it. I grab them and tell him, “I can’t. I need to get home.”
But do I? Other than a charity concert we have coming up in a few weeks, technically my schedule is open, and maybe this is what I need to ensure step three is working. It’s just . . . it’s my home. It grounds me, and right now, emotionally, I’m a mess and all over the place. Would I be fine at his house? Probably, but there’s something to be said for home, and I know that’s where I need to go right now to decompress all these feelings, especially after the last two days.
“Okay, well when do I get to see you again?” he asks.
This is the same question I’ve been asking myself, and I don’t have an answer. Neither one of us has any events coming up that would put us in or near the same city, and as for a holiday, aside from Memorial Day weekend, the next big one to celebrate at the lake is Fourth of July, which is two and a half months away.
“I don’t know,” I say, voice just above a whisper.
I’m being ridiculous. I’m certain of this. All I’ve said over and over is that I want to be with him, and here he is inviting me to go home with him, but I’m so in my head and anxious about what we might or might not be that I’m paralyzing myself with this fear.
Through the mirror over the desk, I watch as Clay leans forward and places his elbows on his knees. His hands are dangling between them as he looks at the ground, and he just shakes his head.
“So basically I’m becoming Justin’s replacement,” he says out of nowhere, and I’m so stunned by this my jaw drops and I whip around and stare at him.
“What? No. You are nothing like him—why would you say that?”
He lets out a deep sigh, gets up, walks to the windows, and pulls the shades back to look out at the lake. Does this lake make him miss his home like I miss mine?
“Because I spoke to Avery about you,” he says so nonchalantly, as if discussing me with someone else—scratch that, with my best friend—isn’t a big deal at all.
“You did what? Why?” I don’t know whether to be giddy about this and the fact that he’s intrigued enough to want to learn more about me, or angry because in some way I feel betrayed that he talked about me with someone else without me knowing, behind my back.
He turns and crosses his arms over his chest. “Because I wanted to know you from her perspective. I know what you tell me, and I wanted to know more.”
My hands curl into fists and involuntarily move to cover my heart. It’s as if my brain already knows I need to protect it. “Why wouldn’t you just ask me? I’ll tell you anything.”
“Will you?”
Such a simple question, just two words, but I feel the ground shift underneath me.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
He doesn’t say anything, just stares at me, as a muscle ticks in his jaw. One by one I can see the bricks of the wall I’ve spent the last four months trying to tear down begin to rebuild. I haven’t even done anything, and yet I feel like he just took ten giant steps away from me. That’s when it hits me.
Oh.
My eyes start to sting, and a knot forms in my throat that I have to swallow down.
“You don’t trust me.”
