Little Lies(72)

“I just . . . I wanted to see . . .” I flounder, fighting the rising panic.

“See what?” She flails her hand toward her bed. “What I keep in my nightstand drawer? Did you check for a journal? Did you want to see if I was still pining for you? Were you looking for more ways to humiliate me? Coveting them like little grenades you planned to set off every time I needed a reminder of how much you hate me?”

She stalks closer, and I hold my breath, willing her to touch me—shove me, smack me, anything, but she doesn’t. Her ocean-blue eyes flash with ire. “Message fucking received, Kodiak. You delivered it perfectly two years ago, and I sure as hell haven’t forgotten how that felt. I don’t require any more goddamn reminders, though you seem like you’re quite fond of delivering them. I screwed up your life. I get it. I was a goddamn child, and I had no idea it was going to get as bad as it did, but I was not alone in those choices, so stop punishing me for something I didn’t have a whole hell of a lot of control over.”

“That wasn’t . . . I don’t . . . I’m not . . .” I pace the room, more to keep myself from acting on impulses I can’t allow. I accidentally kick a bottle of lube across the floor. It comes to a stop in front of Lavender. She bends to pick it up, flipping it between her fingers.

“Then what was this about?” She lobs the bottle at me. Normally she has piss-poor aim, but it hits me in the thigh, a few inches shy of my junk. I catch it before it can fall to the floor. I try not to think about what she uses this for, but the images are already popping like bubbles in my brain.

“I didn’t want you up here alone with him,” I admit.

“Why? You’ve made it clear you don’t want me. So why are you being such a cockblocking son of a bitch, other than to make me miserable?”

I scrub a hand over my face. “That’s not true.”

“Oh yes, it is! You’ve been a nightmare to deal with. Every time I turn around, there you are, making my life damn well impossible. Why can’t you leave me alone? Why do you feel the need to torment me so relentlessly?”

“Because I can’t have you!” I shout.

Her expression shifts to confusion. “Have you lost your goddamn mind? You don’t even want me, so why does that matter?” she shouts back. “Who the fuck are you? What the hell happened to you?”

I don’t understand how she can’t see what’s right in front of her. Why does she have to make me say it all? What happened to when we could just be together and know what the other person was feeling? “You! You happened!”

She throws her hands in the air. “I won’t apologize for the mistakes we made when we were kids!”

I’m done fighting this, and her. I can’t keep doing this or I’m going to lose my mind, and based on what I’ve done tonight, I think I’m already halfway there. I can’t think, I can’t focus . . . All these years of holding this in have eaten away at me, turning me into someone I don’t even recognize.

Desperation bubbles to the surface and spills over. “How can you not see it?”

“See what?”

“Don’t you get it? All of it was bullshit!” I yell. “I lied!”

Her voice goes eerily calm. “Lied about what, exactly?”

Her frustration at my lack of explanation is understandable, but I’ve spent so many years avoiding and pushing my feelings down, I don’t know how to tell her the truth. I worry I’ve ruined this, us, beyond repair and she’ll never forgive me.

And I’ll lose her all over again.

“About everything.” I run my hands through my hair.

She skims her bottom lip with her teeth, running them over the scar. “Explain that, please,” she says, voice barely a whisper.

“After our parents sat us down and told us we needed a break, I was so angry. It hurt to stay away from you. I hated it, but I also realized I didn’t have control anymore. Not when it came to you. It had to be all or nothing. I was making you worse. I was making me worse. I made you dependent on me, and the worst part was that I wanted it that way. They were right to try to split us up. I was so fucking toxic.”

“That’s what you said, we were toxic for each other.”

I shake my head. “You were never toxic for me, but I was toxic for you. For a while I didn’t see it, but you started to do better. I hated that you were okay without me. I knew if I kept coming back, it would ruin you, and you’d already been through so much.” I lace my fingers behind my neck and pace the length of the room. “But that night before we moved, all I wanted was to see you, see for myself that you really were better and that I’d done the right thing.”

“You kissed that girl the day you left! I saw it happen.”

“I was angry! You didn’t come to say goodbye.”

Her eyes flash with indignation. It’s understandable, but it’s terrifying all the same. “You’d barely spoken to me in months. What was I saying goodbye to? And it’s not as though you made an effort to reach out after you moved anyway!”

“I did try, but you shut me down and then stopped responding!”

“River blocked your messages,” she says softly. “I didn’t know until recently.”

“Of course he fucking did. And you know what? He was right to do it because I wouldn’t have been able to let you go otherwise. After we moved, I still missed you all the damn time. It killed me that you were gone from my world, but there wasn’t another option. I wasn’t going to be good for you. Everyone saw what I couldn’t. I was na?ve to believe that after five fucking years I could handle being near you again. I couldn’t deal at all. All it took was seeing you once and everything came rushing back. I was still going to be toxic for you. And you weren’t a kid anymore, which made it worse. Nothing had changed, Lavender. Not for me. I felt exactly the same as I had the day I moved away from you, so I lied.” She’s silent and unmoving, so I continue, digging my own grave. “That night when you came and found me at your parents’—”