Faking It (Losing It, #2)(49)

Was it just a ticket? Or did it represent something more?

I was sitting on my couch, holding the ticket, when the phone rang.

I looked at the caller ID and smiled. Talking to a friend from back home was exactly what I needed.

I hit accept and held the phone to my ear. “Rusty, if you’re calling to bitch about how much being a grown-up sucks, don’t expect a pep talk because I’ve got nothing.”

Rusty laughed on the other end, and just like that, all the time and miles between friends had been erased.

He said, “Tell me about it. Can we go back in time and tell our past selves to flunk a few classes so we can go back to being in college?”

“Hey, I am still in college.”

“Ah, grad school doesn’t count. That’s like college 2.0—all of the work and none of the fun.”

“And?” she askedmpm, working full-time is so much better?” I asked.

“Hell no. Yesterday someone spit coffee at me. Okay, so on the counter in front of me, but still I watched liquid arch from a stranger’s mouth toward me. This is my life.”

We laughed, and then the line went quiet.

After a few seconds, he said, “Now that I’ve buttered you up with laughs, I’ll get straight to the point . . .” And so the other shoe drops. “Bliss. I heard about the engagement. I’m sorry, man.”

I picked the airline ticket back up, and held it as I said, “You and everybody else on Facebook.”

“How are you doing with it?”

I said, “Okay.”

And I was just fine . . . where Bliss was concerned anyway.

“Cade . . .”

“I am, Rusty. I promise. I mean, I saw them a week or two ago, and it was awkward as hell. And depressing, because I’m pretty sure my friendship with Bliss is DOA. But I’m okay. There’s actually this other girl.”

I hadn’t told anyone about Max. I’d liked feeling that she was this awesome secret that I refused to share with the world. But she had my mind so twisted up that I had to tell someone.

“Another girl, huh?” he asked. “What’s she like?”





32

Max

I refused to be nervous about spending time with Cade. Not when I had so many other things to worry about, but thoughts of him kept creeping into my head.

He’d ruined me.

Before I’d been like ice—cold and cutting and solid. But for weeks, he’d been thawing me out, and I hated it.

There was no control like this, no protection. And I had fewer than twenty-four hours until the end of the world. Also known as family Christmas.

Home was the lion’s den. My scars were always more sensitive there because that’s where I’d gotten the wounds. Now more than ever I needed my armor.

So today was about strengthening my resolve.

My mom had called seventeen and a half times today already. The half because one of the phone calls lasted so long that classifying it as one call just didn’t seem fair.

My brother and his wife, Bethany, had arrived yesterday, and I could feel the pretentiousness creeping through the phone just hearing them in the background.

I still hadn’t packed my bags. I had two sets of clothes folded and ready to go—my traditional holiday garb of turtlenecks and scarfs . . . or my normal clothes. As much as I wanted to make Cade happy, this wasn’t a decision that I could make lightly.

When I came home from my shift at the tattoo parlor, I reached out to tug open the door to my building, and it didn’t budge. I blinked, and then pulled again, but nothing changed.

I stepped back and looked around my street to make sure I’d gone to the right building. There was the Laundromat next door, which meant I was in the right place. I stepped forward and yanked on the door again. Nothing.

The door was locked.

The door to this building hadn’t been locked in ages, almost a year, I was sure.

I fished out my keys fingernails scrapeed by owI wondered if , and it took me a few seconds to even remember which key worked on this door because it had been so long. What had made the landlord fix it now? I’d given up bugging him about it months ago because nothing worked.

Unless he hadn’t been the one to fix it.

I froze with the key halfway to the lock. Would Cade have done that? Even though we were . . . well, not whatever we had been.

I weighed the probability in my mind of who could have fixed the door. Between my bum of a landlord and Golden Boy—the choice was obvious.

My heartbeat sped up faster just thinking about the possibility.

Maybe it didn’t mean anything. Maybe it wasn’t even him.

But what if it was and what if it did?

I thawed a little bit more.

I shook my head, and focused on my keys. When I found the right one, I shoved it into the lock a little too hard. Then I went upstairs and faced my packing options. I took a few turtlenecks, just in case, but for the most part I packed my normal clothes, the clothes I thought Cade would have approved of.

When I couldn’t hold back my nerves about tomorrow or my fantasies about Cade being the one to fix my door, I went to bed for the night, hoping I could stay strong . . . against everything.



My head was pounding, and it sounded like I was underwater. The world was so far away and too bright after so long alone in the dark. A light shined in my eye, and I flinched. A face hovered over mine, and my heart turned over in my chest.