Kiss the Sky (Addicted #3)(105)

Her eyes brighten in surprise. “Really?”

I nod, willing to try anything with her. I want her to experience as many firsts with me as she possibly can. I’ve smoked only once—my first and only foray into illegal drugs. It was strategic. Boarding school. Trying to gain a connection I needed for Student Council.

“On one condition,” I reply. “You tell me who gave these to you.”

“Daisy.” She doesn’t even hesitate. “If I have the drugs, then she doesn’t have them. They’re much safer in my position.” She grins.

Devious and intelligent. I like this side of her.

My face suddenly falls as I remember something important.

I’m on Adderall.

And I’m not a hundred percent positive it’s safe to smoke pot on the stimulant. The small percentage of doubt is not something I’m willing to live with. I’ll never forgive myself for impairing my brain or my body over something so stupid.

“What’s wrong?” She touches my arm in concern.

The one question makes me frown even deeper. I’m getting worse at hiding my emotions from her. Or maybe…maybe I just don’t care if she’s sees this part of me anymore.

For the first time, I really want to be honest with her.

Not just my half-assed attempt at honesty. I want her to know me as well as I know myself. So I prepare to admit the one thing that could cause her to storm out, pack her bags, sleep in Daisy’s room and maybe even sling my clothes out the window.

“I’m on Adderall,” I let it go. One sentence. One breath.

She drops her hand from my arm, and her I’m-going-to-rip-your-dick-off glare heats her eyes. “Bullshit,” she says. “You would never take Adderall.”

“I wouldn’t,” I agree. “But I was losing sleep, and I wasn’t putting a hundred percent into Wharton or Cobalt Inc., so I decided to start taking it.”

“For how long?” Her collarbones sharpen as she holds in a breath. I remember what Frederick once told me when I was only eighteen and I thought I was finished discovering who I was and what I wanted to be. He said, “Lies tear at relationships until they’re nothing but unwound threads.”

I hate that my own has begun to unravel.

I hate that, in this moment, I am ordinary.

“The end of January.”

“Almost four months,” she says, dumbfounded. But she doesn’t attack me, doesn’t throw up her hands and call it quits. Her eyes are on the ground as she thinks it over.

“You would’ve given up something if you didn’t, right?” she asks, her eyes flitting to mine, so many questions swimming in them.

“Not you,” I tell her. “I would have never given up you.”

“Wharton?”

I nod, and she shakes her head in dismay. “I don’t want you to choose me over your dream,” she says. “But I can’t stand here and be okay with you choosing me over your health.”

It’s not fair for me to put her in a position, to trap her into giving me an ultimatum. I know what I have to do. Even if the semester is almost over, I still have a year and a half left. I’m not even close to graduating and earning this final degree.

I notice the space between us. Five feet away. Five feet too much. I imagine that space so much further if I make the wrong decision right now.

Frederick is right.

My mother is right.

I can’t have everything. So I’m going to have to f*cking choose.

“I’m withdrawing from Wharton,” I deliver the lines with finality. It hardly topples me backwards. It doesn’t even make me sway. In fact, a weight rises off my shoulders—a heaviness that I didn’t even know was there before. Dragging me down.

It’s not as earth-shattering as I once believed it would be. Sometimes the dreams you construct for yourself at ten, twelve-years-old aren’t the same ones you thought they would be at twenty-four. And it just takes a while to finally make peace with that.

I think I just have.

“Connor—”

“I’m going to quit taking Adderall.” I step towards her and place my hands on her shoulders.

“Your MBA—”

“I don’t need it.”

“You never needed it,” she reminds me. “That’s not why you were trying to get one.” I see the guilt in her eyes. I’ve chosen her over my dream, and I told her never to do that for me.

I cup her face with my hand, skimming her bottom lip with my thumb, her lipstick a dark red that makes her look as fierce as she is. I want to be with her every day of my life. I want to be here, not in class. And I have the means to do so.

“My dreams have changed,” I say. The future I once imagined is gone. Where I proudly accept my diploma, where I prove to myself that I’m the best because I can be. The longer I’ve been with this girl, the faster it’s flitted away.

I kiss her deeply, and she reciprocates in reply, silently telling me that she’s accepting my decision.

“That was easy,” I say as we part, holding her around the waist while I stare down at her smooth skin, her cheeks reddened with blush and heat from the kiss. “I thought you would fight me harder.”

She shakes her head. “You should see the look in your eyes.”