Page 67 of The Best I Never Had

Owen looks over his shoulder, then risks a step closer. “Do I not make you feel wanted enough, Thea?”

No one has ever made me feel as wanted as Owen. “I like you like this. Happy and teasing.”

He shrugs with a self-deprecating smile. “It’s not my normal style. But it’s easier with you.”

I get what he means. I don’t stress about what I’m saying with him. I just am. “Yeah, I know the feeling.”

I love having this with Owen, but the second that thought crosses my mind, it feels like a bomb detonating inside me. The word “love” in relation to another person besides Addy and Vaughn has never crossed my mind. It’s big and too unpredictable. I don’t love him—I hardly know him—but I think I could, and that’s terrifying.

There’s so much at risk, and not just my own heart. It’s only been ten minutes since we decided to give this thing a try, and we’ve already been discovered. How are we supposed to keep it together for another week? I’m mad at Addy, but that doesn’t mean I’m willing to play around with her future.

I open my mouth, but Owen cuts me off. “Nope. We’re not doing that.”

“Not—we’re not—what are you talking about?” I sputter out.

“I can see it on your face,” he says with a little half smile. “You’re spiraling over Gabriel catching us and coming up with all the worst-case scenarios. Were you about to tell me we couldn’t be together?”

My mouth opens and closes like a fish desperate for water. I don’t have an answer for him, because I was about to say that.

Owen glances up and down the hallway, then plants a quick kiss on my forehead. “If you decide I’m not it for you, I’ll respect that. But don’t let fear and our families steal it from us, okay?”

I look up at him, the determined set of his jaw and the earnestness in his breathtaking eyes, and nod. How could I make any other decision when he’s in front of me?

“Okay then,” he says, a boyish smile taking over his face. “I guess I’ll see you tomorrow.”

He sends another furtive glance up and down the hallway before lifting my hand and placing a kiss in the center of my palm. Then he walks off, leaving me boneless in his wake.

I blessedly make it back to my room without running into anyone and take a quick shower, already regretting the loss of Owen’s scent on my skin. I need to steal something of his, a shirt or hoodie that I can throw under the bed if someone comes to my room.

My phone buzzes and Vaughn’s name flashes across it. I answer on the first ring. “Hey, friend!”

His bark of laughter rings through the line. “Oh my god, you got laid.”

I drop onto the bed. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Vaughn hums. “Of course not. You always answer the phone all chipper like that. I guess my call to check in on how things are going was unnecessary.”

My head jumps to how things are going with an image of Owen on his knees before me, the tight grip of his fingers on my thigh grounding me, the sweep of his tongue over me.

“You still with me, Thee?”

“Yup.” I snap out of the vision and am suddenly flooded with everything else that’s happened today, my stomach roiling over the argument I’ve been ignoring in favor of the memories of Owen. “Addy and I got into a fight.”

“Not what I thought you were going to say,” Vaughn says, his voice louder like I was on speakerphone, but my comment was enough to make him sit and pick up the phone. “What happened?”

A wildly complicated question. As hurtful as Addy’s comments were, there are parts of her side that I get. Does the fact that our mother birthed her automatically earn her a position of respect?

Addy’s all anger toward Mom. She doesn’t remember the good parts—or really any parts—but those good parts did exist. Dance parties when she got a new job and long walks in state parks describing the dream home she’d never get. She got clean while pregnant with and nursing Addy because she loved us. Almost two years of perfection. But when neither of us was reliant on her body to survive, her illness let her justify starting back up.

It’s easy to focus on the bad when she can’t remember the good, but Addy can remember the good with me. At least, I think there was good. I tried to be there for her, to make sure she knew through all the instability that I was there. That she was loved. That I’d do anything—sacrifice anything—to keep her happy. Her lumping me in with her worst childhood experiences feels like a dismissal of all that.

I don’t know how to describe this to Vaughn. He’s always been quick to judge Addy, and I don’t want to get into it with him.

“Not a big deal. She made a comment that hit a tender spot, and I lost it. But I let off some steam, so it’s fine.”

Vaughn’s sigh is long and pained. “You plan to ignore it.”

It’s a comment, not a question. More than anything, it feels like a judgment on my relationship with Addy, and the surge of defensiveness I knew was coming rears up.