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I could only hold back my tears until I was outside running back to campus. With no one around, I bawled. I had been such a fool. I was an idiot to think that someone like him could love me. And it was a mistake to give a football player a chance.
They were all the same. Perhaps Nero had found a different way to hurt me. But, in every way, this was worse. At least I had my protective barrier around me in high school. Nero had gotten me to bare my heart. With it exposed, he had reached in and ripped it from my chest.
As the thoughts overwhelmed me, I slowed looking for a place to collect myself. Looking around, I realized where I was. This was where Nero and I had escaped to after I panicked realizing who I had been assigned.
I found the bench we had chosen and sat down. The tears didn’t stop. With my elbow on my knees, I cried into my hands. I had tried to push my feelings for him aside and be a professional, but how could he be so cruel? Didn’t he have a heart? Hadn’t he cared about me at all?
“Kendall, are you okay?”
It took a second for the words to register. Someone was standing in front of me. They were in arm’s reach and the voice sounded familiar. It took me a moment to place it, but when I did, terror tore through me like a fireball. Evan Carter.
I looked up finding the vision from my nightmares staring back at me. This was it. He was going to kill me for what Nero did to him. I needed to get away.
“Leave me alone!” I said jumping up and backing off.
“No, wait. I’m not here to hurt you. I just wanna talk,” he said holding up his hands.
“Sure you are. Just like in high school. What are you gonna do this time, beat me to an inch of my life and leave me for dead?”
“Jesus, no! Fuck! Why would you say that?”
“Why would I say that?” I asked shocked. “Have you forgotten all of the things you did to me? Because I haven’t. I still dream about them. I can’t get them out of my head.”
Horror flashed across Evan’s face hearing my words. He was stunned. Stopping his pursuit, he yelled, “I’m sorry! I’m so sorry,” he said before falling to his knees overwhelmed.
Wait, what?
I didn’t understand what was going on. It startled me so much that I slowed to a stop. Had he just apologized to me? He did. And it sounded like he meant it.
I stood staring at him wondering what I should do. I could walk away, but Evan had just given me what I had dreamed about for so long. And he had without a threat to his life.
“I was such an asshole to you. And I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that I’m only here because you broke into my house with that guy and now I regret what happened. But no. I’ve always regretted it. There hasn’t been a second I haven’t hated myself for doing those things to you.”
Now I was really confused.
“I don’t understand. If you regretted doing them, then why did you?”
Evan looked up. There were tears in his eyes. Actual tears. I didn’t think he was capable of human emotions.
“You have to have known. Out of everyone, you had to know. There’s no way you didn’t.”
“I hate to tell you this, but I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” I said approaching him.
“Don’t you remember when it all started?”
I searched my memory.
“When what started? You were always a dick to me. You were an asshole from the first time we met.”
“That’s not true. You have to know that’s not true.”
“I don’t. Because it is,” I said defiantly.
“Freshman year we were in the same art class. Remember?”
I thought back.
“Mr. Adderley.”
