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What sucks is I still have to lie to him.
In a perfect world and in the best of circumstances I could tell Damon the truth about how I feel. But with his dad calling him and everything else, the truth of my feelings has to stay concealed.
Another couple weeks and this would have been a different story, but as it stands now, I have no choice.
“I can be friends with you two. I mean, that’s all this is, right?”
He laughs, but it’s anger rolling off that sound, that and disbelief.
“I find that hard to believe considering youpromisedEzra you’d stay with him and leave me after high school. If you ask me, that means you’re lying to me now about what you actually want.”
“That was ten years ago,” I say, crossing my arms over my chest because I need to hide in some way from the energy that surrounds this man. “Things change.”
Running a hand through his hair, Damon shifts his weight, the anger dissipating into sorrow.
“Do they? Because they haven’t changed with me. And judging by the way Ezra has been acting, it hasn’t changed with him either. So tell me, Red, do things change?”
Pausing to let me answer what I was hoping was a rhetorical question, Damon shakes his head and paces away from me, his voice barely controlled when he speaks again.
“Tell me, Red. Do they change? I actually wanted an answer to that.”
No.
Not at all, in fact.
Not in my life, at least.
Think about it. Really look at what it is. In my senior year of high school, I was promised to Mason, my life planned out for me, my marriage already arranged. I wasn’t being sent to college. I was allowed to travel the world, but only to make myself a better hostess for foreign business contacts.
I had my entire life laid out for me.
And now?
Everything is the same.
I had one week of believing it could be different. One week until Damon admitted how he felt and I had to let the fantasy of Ezra go.
One fucking week.
That’s all I was allowed of a normal life.
Unfortunately, the only answer I have is exactly what he doesn’t want to hear. Which leaves me in a place where I’m lying again.
“They do. Plus, I’m not sure that any of it really matters. In a few years, I’ll be married to -“
Damon’s laughter cuts me off, his amber eyes seeking mine.
“Do you really think that will happen? That Mason will go through with it?”
If things work out the way I hope they will, no. But who knows what can happen in the next two years?
There’s no point in answering. We could run this topic around in circles for hours, days and weeks and never come up with a reasonable solution.
I should know.
I’ve been doing it foryears.
“Just friends,” he mutters, more to himself than me, as if tasting the idea, rolling it over his tongue before struggling to swallow it.
