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I say, “This thing with you and Leo . . .”
“I’m not going to pretend that I’m fine with what his parents did to my family,” Dean says. “But that’s got nothing to do with you and me.”
“I don’t want any fighting.”
His lips press together in a thin line. He’s silent for a moment, thinking. Then at last he says, “Fine. As long as I’m with you, I won’t do anything to Leo.”
“We’re not together, though,” I tell him. “It’s just one date.”
Dean lifts my hand and presses it to his lips.
He looks in my eyes, fierce and intent.
“It will be more than one date.”
16
LEO
Imagine that you’re standing on a cliff, and you don’t realize it’s a cliff. You think you’re on solid ground. Until your feet slip out from under you. You begin to fall. After that first terrifying lurch, you pinwheel your arms, trying to catch your balance. But you keep falling and falling. You think to yourself,I’m gonna smash on the ground any second now. I’m not gonna survive this.Yet you fall and fall and fall. And eventually you realize there is no bottom—you’re plunging down into hell.
That’s what it was like losing Anna.
There is no bottom.
I’m still falling.
Every day that passes is worse than the day before.
If only I hadn’t been so fucking stupid the day after the party. If only I’d begged and groveled and apologized.
But I woke up with my head still fuzzy and throbbing. I rolled out of bed, not even sure how I got there in the first place. I had a vague memory of a girl looking up at me from her knees—a girl with dark eyes and hair, a girl who definitely wasn’t Anna.
I knew I’d fucked up somehow. But I didn’t really feel like it was my fault. It all seemed like a dream, like it had happened to somebody else.
So I waited outside her dorms to apologize, but it was only a half-apology. My head was throbbing, and my stomach was churning. I thought Anna would see as clearly as I did that the night before was just a stupid mess, that it didn’t mean anything. I thought she knew how I felt about her.
I was wrong.
I should have seen how much I’d hurt her.
The pain was clear on her face. If my own head wasn’t pounding like a drum, I would have recognized it.
Instead, I lost my temper.
She told me she walked home with Dean, and I felt this overwhelming wave of jealousy and rage. I didn’t know if she had kissed him or fucked him or just walked next to him, and I didn’t care. I felt that she belonged to me, and that Dean had tried to steal my property.
Looking back on it now, I could punch myself in the face.
I hadn’t done anything to make sure that Anna was mine. I just assumed that I owned her and I always would. I thought I possessed her without actually earning it first.
So I shouted at her. Insulted her. And drove her away, at the one and only moment where I might have been able to convince her to stay.
And now she’s with Dean instead. And I fucking hate him.
But not nearly as much as I hate myself.
I lost the one person in the world who mattered most to me.
