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Tears well up in my eyes again, but I don’t fight them. There’s no point.
Sloane and I don’t have a lot to say to each other, anyway, so it’s no trouble to sit in her car quietly with tears streaming down my face.
I’m numb by the time we get to the sorority house. I follow Sloane and she scans in, then she holds the door to let me in, and I murmur a habitual, “Thank you.”
She nods, starting toward the stairs, but she halts before we go up and turns to face me. “I know you weren’t aware…”
“No. I wasn’t,” I say quietly.
“So I don’t blame you for anything, or dislike you over it. I just wanted to get that out of the way.”
I try to muster the barest upturn of my mouth, but I just can’t, and the effort exhausts me. I reach for the railing of the staircase because I know the way to Addison’s room, and maybe this is as far as she wants to take me.
But then she stops me with a, “Brynn.”
I stop and look back at her.
“You didn’t know then, so it’s okay. But now you do.”
I hold her gaze for a moment, my eyes bloodshot and my face puffy. She’s out of sorts for Sloane Whitley, but she’s still the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen. Maybe even prettier like this because she looks more real somehow, like flesh and bones with a beating heart instead of perfect plastic carefully stored behind a clear but impenetrable shield.
I smile sadly. “Yeah. Now, I do.”
I don’t know if it’s the promise she’s looking for that I’ll stay away from him, but to be honest, I don’t have it in me to reassure her right now.
He just broke my heart, so I don’t have the energy to look after hers.
Ugh, not more fucking tears.
I turn and head up the staircase before she sees them. I trudge to the second floor and down the hall, and I stop outside Addison’s door.
I feel like an absolute asshole knocking on it at this time of night, knowing she’s likely asleep, but I tried texting Stacie in the car and she didn’t answer.
Maybe now that Killian is out of my life, she’ll let me move back in, but I won’t know until morning, and I need somewhere to sleep tonight.
The door opens and Addison answers, a fuzzy pastel sleep mask pushed up to her forehead. Her eyes widen at the sight of me, and her expression turns immediately supportive when she gets a good look at me.
“Are you okay?”
I shake my head no, my lips turning down and the goddamn tears starting again.
“Come in.” She opens the door and steps back to make room for me. Her gaze drifts to Toast, and once she has the door shut behind me, she grabs the pink bag that’s stuffed full now that Sloane shoved my coat in it.
I drop the bag on the ground, then bend down to put Toast’s bed in the corner. I gently put her down on it so she knows she can be here, then I turn back to Addison. “Is it okay if I sleep here tonight?”
“Of course.” She nods, sitting down on the edge of the empty bed. “What happened?”
“I don’t want to talk about it. I can’t talk about it,” I amend, shaking my head. “I’m so drained, I just want to to go to sleep.”
“Of course.” She stands up. “We can talk tomorrow.” Her gaze drifts to my bag. “We should unpack some of your stuff quickly though, so you can go to sleep.”
I nod my agreement, but I can’t seem to move.
She waits a minute, and when I just stand here like a glitching robot, she says, “I’ll do it.”
I watch, feeling a bit detached, as she takes all the things I brought with me out of the big pink bag. It’s a random assortment of crap because I grabbed mindlessly, but she tries to organize them on the desk.
When she gets to the bottom, she puts the empty bag in my closet with my coat, then turns back to me. “I didn’t see a blanket.”
