“Maybe I should just head over to the party,” he says.
“She’ll end up hating you, too.” It’s true. We’ve both gone about this the wrong way, no matter how entitled we are. Kira is a woman, with her own free will. With her own right to decide what’s best for her—what’s going to help her forget the pain I caused her. Help her be happy again.
Us getting in the way of that only hurts her more.
But, fuck, I just wish to high hell it wouldn’t have been Austin.
“So what the hell are you going to do?”
“I have no fucking clue,” I grit out.
“Are you giving up?”
I stare down at the hazel eyes of the kitty tattoo on my wrist. “I think she wants me to.”
“Can you?”
The answer to that is easy. “I don’t think so.” But that’s not where it ends. Suddenly, it’s all bursting out of me, like a flood, unstoppable. Destructive. “What does it matter, though? I gave her every reason to hate me—”
“She doesn’t hate you, Brayden.”
I laugh again at his statement. “You didn’t see her eyes tonight. She does. And I don’t blame her. I never will. I can’t force her to believe that I love her. Won’t matter if she does if she can never forget everything I did to her. I’d hate me, too, if I were her.”
His frustrated exhale comes over the phone. “Even if she does hate you, you do know what that means, right?”
I fall silent at his question, confused.
“It means she still loves you. You can’t hate something you don’t care about. Think of your dad.”
That is the very last person I want to think about right now. That wound needs to remain tightly sealed, thank you very much. I’m already bleeding internally over Kira. I don’t need to add whatever sick emotions my father has caused into the mix.
“I know it’s hard to think about it right now—”
“Stop psychoanalyzing me.”
“Somebody has to, because it sounds to me like you’re letting yourself get caught up in the pain and you’re not thinking clearly.”
“What the hell do you want me to say?” I shift in the seat, too worked up, too raw to take this. He’s adding to my frustration, poking at an already irritated weakness, and I don’t know how long I can hold out without snapping at him. “Your sister told me it’s over. Done. She told me there’s no hope, pretty much let me know that no matter what I do, I’ll never be able to fix it. Then she told me to leave and that she wanted Austin there instead of me!” The last part leaves me on a roar, and the still half-full bottle goes flying out of my hand, shattering against the wall.
Immediately, I’m reaching for one of the others at my feet, ready to open it— “Brayden, are you drinking?”
Sighing, I leave the bottle on the ground.
“Stop for a second and hear me out.”
“Your girl’s not with another man, doing God knows what with him,” I murmur angrily, my fingers twitching listlessly. I need something in them—a bottle back in my hand.
No, what I actually need is Kira, her soft skin beneath my fingertips, her pretty eyes staring up at me like they once used to. Like she adored and admired me.
Like she couldn’t imagine a life without me.
“Not right now, no, but it did happen.”
I snap to attention at Ryan’s comment. “What?”
“What do you think got my ass in gear? She got sick of waiting for me, started moving on with her life.”
Man, I realize, there’s really so much about what went down between him and Dana that I’ve been clueless about. That he hasn’t told me. In the back of my head, I wonder why he never did, but I also can’t fault him for it. It’s not like I’d given him a front-row seat to what happened between me and his sister.
Yeah, partially because she is his sister, but it was also too weird to give him the 4-1-1 on how messed up a girl had me.
“How did you deal with it?” It’s not like I’d seen him stumbling all over the place, drunk off his ass like I’m getting now.
Wait. I had seen him like that. But we’d been partying together.
“Exactly as you’re dealing with it now,” he tells me, confirming my suspicions.
Suddenly, I feel like an even bigger piece of shit as I realize what a “great” friend I’ve been.
I wasn’t there for him. Okay, I didn’t know, but I could have paid more attention, maybe seen some signs that would have helped me know he wasn’t doing so well.
“But Dana forgave you.”
“Eventually.”
“Didn’t take too long from my point of view.”
“I also didn’t fuck up nearly half as long or half as bad as you have, you stubborn fuck.”
I sink lower on the loveseat. The self-hate is a hurricane rolling in my chest. Deadly. Growing deadlier by the second.
In desperate need of an outlet.
Trapped.
“Like I told you. It’s hopeless—”
“You’re really starting to convince me that you’re ready to give up on her.”
I do the smart thing and shut the fuck up.
“Hear me out before I also decide that it’s time for you to give up.”
Lips pressed together, I remain quiet, my hand itching to reach for one of the bottles.