You and Everything After (Falling #2)(57)

This stops her. Her face is still the same, and her arms are still guarding her body. But she’s looking at me differently now. I hope I say the correct words, just enough to prop that door open until I can do this the right way.

“I’m sorry,” I say it again, and this time, somehow by the grace of god, it comes out sober—sober and honest. “I am so unbelievably sorry. Sorry for what I said, how I reacted, for being a dick.”

“Yes, you were a dick,” she’s quick to jump on that.

“I know, another statement of fact,” I say with a smirk, once again holding up a finger. I look at my finger, and it makes me laugh, then I look back at her and she looks like I’m losing her. Pull it together, Tyson—slide the rock in the door. “I have a lot of groveling to do. And I’m in—I’m ready to do it. But if you could just give me the night, just…just wait for me to get my head on straight.”

“Just let you go home, vomit, and then survive your hangover you mean?” she says, but there’s a smirk. I see it. She’s smirking.

“One,” I say, holding the finger up again. I quickly put it down. “One, I don’t vomit. I can hold my liquor, baby.”

“Ohhhhh, definitely do not call me baby,” she says.

“Right, okay, baby,” I laugh, but she’s not laughing, so I stop. “Right. No baby. I’m just saying wait with me, until the morning, so I can say everything that needs to be said in a way you deserve to hear it.”

I’m not smiling anymore. No, I’m pretty sure I’m begging. Her arms are still crossed, but she nods to the dorm and I follow along, holding my breath until we get to her door and she opens it wide enough to let me inside.

She reaches under her bed and pulls a bin out with a big comforter and some extra sheets, tossing everything on the floor.

“Make yourself comfortable,” she says. “And I don’t have an extra pillow. And don’t use Rowe’s. I’d be pissed if she gave my pillow to Nate.”

“Oh yeah…floor, so…I’ll just be down here,” I say, leaning forward and picking up the big comforter that suddenly looks very, very thin.

“Yep. You’ll be down there. On the floor,” she says, shutting the closet door behind her so she can change.

I’ve slept on the floor before. I’ve slept here lots of times. No big. And I’m pretty sure I’ll be snoring in about two minutes, so I assemble my makeshift bed like a toddler camping out in his room for the night. Pulling myself from my chair to the floor, I tuck the excess pile of linens under my head. I’m awake enough that I hear the closet door creak open and see Cass’s feet stop just short of her bed while she stares at me.

“Goodnight, baby,” I say, unable to help myself.

“Don’t call me baby,” she says, and I smile and drift off to sleep, the door open and waiting for me in the morning.





Chapter 19





Cass


I’ve spent the last hour debating whether or not to wake him up. As drunk as he was last night, he was also incredibly sweet. I’m not sure what I’m going to get this morning.

I lay there and stared at the ceiling while he snored on my floor for hours. It was loud, but that’s not what kept me from sleeping. It was the watch—and that word. Always.

This conversation is going to happen, and it’s going to begin the second I wake him up. So, I might as well quit putting off the inevitable. I pick up the small circle pillow from my bed and toss it on his face.

“Morning sunshine,” I say. His watch is tucked in my palm, behind my back, as I sit on the bed and stare down at him.

“Ohhhh wow, yeah,” he grumbles, rubbing his hand harshly over his face and the stubble that is slowly morphing into an almost-beard. “So, I might actually be a little hung over,” he says, stretching his mouth out and moving his tongue around like he’s discovering new things about it. “Dry, so damn dry. Water?”

I leave his watch on my bed and roll my eyes as I stand. After I fill a cup with sink water, I hand it to him, and our fingers touch in the exchange. It still gets to me. He still gets to me. Our eyes lock, and I know no matter what he says this morning, I’m going to feel it.

“I got your watch,” I say, reaching to the bed and tossing it on his chest. The thud it makes on impact is heavy, as it should be. “Told you I would get it.”

He looks at it where it lies, his neck craned enough to view it, and his eyes don’t blink for the longest time. The watch rises up and down with his slow, methodical breathing; his expression looks pained. Finally, he reaches for it with his hand and flips the band inside out, looking at the inscription, running his thumb over the word just like I did.

Then his eyes snap to mine. He’s still holding the watch, his knuckles almost white, he’s clutching it so hard, but his eyes are on me, a soft contrast from his straining fingers—as if he’s trying to communicate a million things at once with that look. I see how sorry he is, but I also see so much more—something too overwhelming for him to translate.

“Kelly was my high school girlfriend,” he starts, and I take a deep breath, sitting back down on the bed, my hands gripping the edge, but my eyes on his—I won’t leave his eyes.

“Before we were boyfriend and girlfriend, we were best friends. I met her in kindergarten. I put glue in her hair in first grade, ate glue to impress her in third, beat up Michael Watson in fifth because he was her boyfriend, stepped on her toes in seventh at the junior high dance, and kissed her when we were freshmen.”