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“What’s wrong?” he asks, reading something on my face that I didn’t want him to see. “What’s Victor done?”
“J,” I say, dropping into the chair and focusing on the view from the window instead of looking at him.
“Don’t bullshit me. I might be down, but I’m not fucking stupid.”
“I know you’re not. I never said you were.”
“Then stop lying to me. You think I haven’t been able to see that something has been wrong since the moment I woke up?”
“My best fucking friend in this whole fucking world tried offing himself,” I blurt without thinking. “Yeah, something is fucking wrong.”
The second I turn to look at him, the weight of what I just said hits me full force.
“Fuck. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“It’s okay,” he says, his voice cracking with emotion.
“No, it’s not. Nothing is fucking okay right now,” I hiss, combing my fingers through my hair and then dragging my hands down my face.
“Talk to me,” he begs. “You’re shutting me out and—”
“And you’re surprised?” I ask. “Look at you,” I say, gesturing toward where he’s sitting in his bed.
Yes, he’s up and functioning now. He’s even managed a shower after we wrapped his bandage, but that doesn’t mean he’s ready for the brutal truth of what’s happening right now.
“I fucked up. I know I fucked up. Everyone vanished, and I got all up in my head. She left, Reid. Rolled out of my bed and walked away without a second glance. I didn’t even know our last fuck was a goodbye fuck. She didn’t care, did she?”
I stare at him as he rants. My lips open and close as I debate what he wants and needs to hear in return, but fuck knows if I have the answer to that.
I’m not the person anyone needs while they’re having emotional relationship issues, no matter how fucked up that relationship might be.
Will telling him that I thought Alana cared about him help? Or does he need me to say the opposite?
Hell, how do I know what is even true?
JD has fallen hard for her, that is the only fact I’m aware of right now.
“She cared,” I eventually say, hoping it’s the right way to go. It’s the truth after all, and I owe him at least a little bit of that.
“You don’t need to pacify me,” he snaps, gently rubbing at the bandage wrapped around his arm.
“I’m not,” I argue.
His eyes hold mine for a beat before he drops his head and stares down at his arm.
“For all the good it did. Fuck,” he hisses, slumping lower in the bed and resting his head back against the wall. “I knew this would happen. I fucking knew it, even when she was down in the basement, yet I still continued.”
“You shouldn’t have made that bet.”
He stills for a moment.
“This has fuck all to do with that bet, Reid. I’d have had her no matter what.”
Ain’t that the fucking truth.
“I just didn’t expect for her to…” His words die off as he lifts his hand to rub at his chest.
I feel his pain almost as if it’s my own, my chest aching right along with his.
