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Yeah, I was a dick.I couldn’t help it. “You saw the same thing I did when we walked in the other day. She and Ezra were all over each other—”
“Yeah? So?”
“She’d just kissed me in the alley behind Sugar Babes, Baron!”
“So, is it jealousy? Because I don’t think Ezra really cares if she kisses you and then kisses him. He’s never been territorial where girls are concerned.”
“No, it’s not jealousy.” And it wasn’t, I realized. I actually, truly, one hundred percent was not jealous of the fact she’d been kissing Ezra. I knew what I felt when I’d kissed her...she’d gone up like a match to lighter fluid. You couldn’t fake that kind of response. If I’d thought for a minute she was kissing me but thinking of someone else...then, yeah. I might be jealous. But she’d been right there with me, wanting me the same way I wanted her. So what was it, then?
“If you’re not jealous, what’s the problem?” Baron was asking me the same thing.
I shook my head, gaze fixed on the floor between my feet. “I honestly don’t fucking know.”
Baron picked up the weights for another set. “You need to figure it out—”
I interrupted him. “All I know is that it is starting to scare the crap out of me.” It was the truth.
When Baron answered his voice was gruff. “Gale, you know I’m a psych major. I think you need to talk to someone about this. I have my theories, but I’m not practicing.”
“I don’t need a fucking shrink.”
“Then talk to me. Friend to friend, man to man. What about her scares you so much?”
I didn’t plan on answering him but I thought about his question, all the same. I couldn’t put my finger on it. I was terrified she’d stay, continue to turn everything upside down—even if it was in all the right kinds of ways. I was also terrified she would decide she’d had enough one day and leave. When she walked out of her room yesterday with her duffle bag slung across her shoulder, I’d wanted to puke. I knew she was leaving, and it was all my fault.
The relief I’d felt when she said she was going to visit her sister had near brought me to my knees. I knew then that it was more than just physical.
I hated that feeling. Hated that vulnerability.
“I can see your wheels turning.” Baron prodded.
“Congratulations.”
“You know what I think?”
“I know you’re going to tell me, whether I want to hear it, or not,” I answered wearily. God, he was chatty this morning. Where was the guy who grunted rather than spoke?
“I don’t think this has anything to do with Jude. I think it’s about your parents. Your mother, specifically.”
My mother was off limits, and I wasn’t sure I saw the connection. Mom had been great until she started using. And I could hardly blame her for that. She’d been in pain.
What about your pain?a little voice whispered. I closed my mind to it. “Thank you, Dr. Freud.” I was done with this workout. Standing, I picked up my towel and water bottle and headed for the door.
“Get mad about it. Truth hurts. But do everyone a favor and actually think about it.”
“I’ll see you later.”
I left Baron in the gym and took the elevator back upstairs, then changed my mind and rode it back down. I needed to do something with this restless energy, this barely contained anger pulsing just beneath my surface.
Exiting the building, I struck out in a run, taking the wooded trail that looped around campus.
I was tired of feeling confused. Did I want her to stay or did I want her to go?
I could admit that I liked waking up to a fresh pot of coffee and whatever she’d made for breakfast. She was generous and nurturing, when anyone else would have sooner spit in the extra waffle batter than share it with her tormentors. I huffed out a laugh, remembering the glee in her expression when she’d spit in my beer. It was twisted, and it was sick, but it had made me so hot.
I liked looking at her. She didn’t try to be attractive; that would have sparked contempt more than anything else. When she was around any of us she dressed exactly as I imagined she did when she was alone—in sweats and pajamas and big tee-shirts that failed epically at hiding her beauty. She had a ridiculous pair of Grinch slippers that made me smile internally every time I saw them. Her hair, with its pink tips, was ridiculous.
I loved it.
