The Not-Outcast(36)

He didn’t look scared.

Why didn’t he look scared?

“Want to know what I was diagnosed with?”

He leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table. “What are you doing? Telling me all of this?”

I leaned forward, too. “Saving you.” My eyes flicked to the door. “Leave. Run. Go away.”

His eyes narrowed and he eased back, but he didn’t move.

Why wasn’t he moving?

“I saw you talking to that suit, and I hated him. You were mine.” Still a soft tone, but his nostrils flared. His eyes flashed. “I don’t know what that was, but I felt it—”

“I thought I was in love with you in school.”

He stopped.

I didn’t. “I thought you knew me. I thought you liked me back. I thought we had a whole relationship, in my head. I was delusional. You didn’t have a clue who I was.” I kept going. “I was in the car. Chad came out to talk to his mom, and you were with him. You waved at me.”

His nostrils flared again.

“You said ‘hey’ to me in the hallway. Once.” And he didn’t remember.

“What’s your point?”

“My point is that there’s a reason you didn’t remember me.”

“No, there’s not.” He laughed.

He actually laughed.

He added, “All I cared about was hockey back then. I woke up, hockey. I went to the bathroom, hockey. Showered, hockey. Went to school, hockey. Everything was hockey for me. I liked girls. I liked getting sex whenever I wanted it back then because it was easy for me, but hockey was my life. I didn’t remember you because I probably saw you and still only saw hockey. I don’t remember any of the girls I fucked from back then, or in my one year at college. I see you now. I want you now. Why’s that such an issue for you?” He leaned forward again. “Why are you so scared?”

Too fast.

Too overwhelming.

Too much to lose.

“I have issues.”

“So? I have a busted elbow.”

The room grew sweltering. “You do? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, but I’m still not understanding your whole thing here. You can’t decide for me if I should want to fuck you again or not.”

Heat seared through me, and a whole tingly thing was starting in my body. It was starting between my legs, where I was remembering what it felt like to have him there, feel him sliding inside of me, how he gripped my hips, how he used my body—but I had to stop.

My throat was starting to seize up.

And he knew.

I saw it.

A whole smirk and cocky knowing was there, and then his eyes turned and they were starting to smolder. Stop the smoldering.

Please.

I couldn’t take the smolder.

I whispered, my voice cracking, “That’s not fair.”

“What’s not fair?”

His voice was silk now.

“Chad doesn’t like me.”

“Chad doesn’t know you.”

“You don’t know me.”

“I would like to know you.”

But why?

None of this made sense.

Sex, yes. I was hella hot, but anything beyond that? No. It just didn’t happen. Who would want me?

I started shaking my head. “I have to take meds to pay attention. To focus. If I don’t, it’s a whole chain reaction. I can’t focus because I’m noticing everything. I can’t put up walls and filter things out, but it’s not just that. I had a panic attack tonight, that’s why I bailed, and it’s embarrassing to have that. God knows what Cassie thought of me. You can’t function. You can’t read cues right. Basic things about when to laugh, when to speak quietly, when to read a room—I can’t do any of those things when I’m having an attack, or especially when I’m having an attack. I look like I’m drunk, but inside I’m dying.”

He didn’t react to that.

He sat there, but his eyes looked down at the table.

I waited.

I didn’t want to be waiting how I was, all tense-like, sitting on the edge of my seat, like I needed his approval or disapproval or his rejection, acceptance? Anything. I hated it, but it mattered. It mattered more than I wished it did and I was holding my breath.

“That’s what happened tonight?”

There was a balloon in my chest, filling, filling, getting tighter and tighter at his question, at how his tone was so not judging, at how, just like that, the balloon started to deflate.

I nodded. “Yeah.”

“What’s it like? What do you feel?”

Like a herd of cattle are stampeding over me, and I can’t ask for help or raise a hand for someone to grab. But I couldn’t tell him that—wait. Why not? So, I did. I repeated every single word, and I waited again when I was done.

This is one of the worst parts. When someone is asking, when you’ve made yourself vulnerable to them, opened yourself up for judgment, and you then have to wait if they’ll ‘get it’ or if they’ll dismiss it because when they dismiss your truth, they dismiss you.

“Jesus. It’s like you’re being Kronewalled again and again and again.”

The sympathy mixed with torture from him had me blinking back tears.