Confess(19)

“Which way is your place?” he asks.

My eyes swing to his and I’m shocked by his forwardness. “You aren’t coming over,” I immediately say.

“Auburn,” he says, laughing, “it’s late. I’m offering to walk you home, not asking to spend the night.”

I inhale, embarrassed at my assumption. “Oh.” I point to the right. “I’m about fifteen blocks that way.”

He smiles and waves a hand in that direction, and we both begin walking. “But if I were asking to spend the night . . .”

I laugh and push him playfully. “I would tell you to f*ck off.”





CHAPTER FOUR



Owen

If I were eleven years old again, I would shake my Magic 8 Ball and ask it silly questions, like “Does Auburn Mason Reed like me? Does she think I’m cute?”

And I might be making assumptions based on the way she’s looking at me right now, but I expect the answer would be “It is decidedly so.”

We continue walking away from the bar, toward her apartment, and considering it’s quite a few blocks away, I can probably think of enough questions between here and there to get to know her a whole lot better. The one thing I’ve been wanting to know most since I saw her standing in front of my studio tonight is why she’s back in Texas.

“You never told me why you moved to Texas.”

She looks alarmed by my comment, but I don’t know why. “I never told you I wasn’t from Texas.”

I smile to cover up my mistake. I shouldn’t know she isn’t from Texas, because as far as she knows, I know nothing about her other than what she’s told me tonight. I do my best to hide what’s really going through my head, because if I were to come clean with her now, it would make me look like I’ve been hiding something from her for the majority of the night. I have, but it’s too late for me to admit that now. “You didn’t have to tell me. Your accent told me.”

She watches me closely, and I can tell she’s not going to answer my question, so I think of a different question to replace that one, but the next question is even more rushed. “Do you have a boyfriend?”

She quickly looks away and it makes my heart sting because for some reason, she looks guilty. I assume this means she does have a boyfriend, and dances like the one I just shared with her shouldn’t happen with girls who have boyfriends.

“No.”

My heart instantly feels better. I smile again, for about the millionth time since I first saw her at my door tonight. I don’t know if she knows this about me yet, but I hardly ever smile.

I wait for her to ask me a question, but she’s quiet. “Are you gonna ask me if I have a girlfriend?”

She laughs. “No. She broke up with you last week.”

Oh, yeah. I forgot we’ve already visited this subject. “Lucky me.”

“That’s not very nice,” she says with a frown. “I’m sure it was a hard decision for her.”

I disagree with a shake of my head. “It was an easy decision for her. It’s an easy decision for all of them.”

She pauses for a second or two, eyeing me warily before she begins walking again. “All of them?”

I realize this doesn’t make me sound good, but I’m not about to lie to her. Plus, if I tell her the truth, she might continue to trust me and ask me even more questions.

“Yes. I get broken up with a lot.”

She squints her eyes and scrunches her nose up at my response. “Why do you think that is, Owen?”

I try to pad the harshness of the sentence about to come out of my mouth by speaking softer, but it’s not a fact I necessarily want to admit to her. “I’m not a very good boyfriend.”

She looks away, probably not wanting me to see the disappointment in her eyes. I saw it anyway, though. “What makes you a bad boyfriend?”

I’m sure there are lots of reasons, but I focus on the most obvious answers. “I put a lot of other things before my relationships. For most girls, not being a priority is a pretty good reason to end things.”

I glance at her to see if she’s still frowning or if she’s judging me. Instead, she has a thoughtful look on her face and she’s nodding.

“So Hannah broke up with you because you wouldn’t make time for her?”

“That’s what it boiled down to, yes.”