Page 18 of My Girl to Ruin

It’s disarming. It’s dangerous. Because it makes me forget. For a few minutes, for a few hours, I forget the four years. What I did. What it cost.

Until she’s gone. Until the apartment is quiet again, and there’s nothing left to stand between me and it. My jaw tightens as I push off the bed, running a hand through my hair as I pace once across the room before stopping near the window.

Tyler.

The name hits like it always does.

I’m sleeping with his sister. There’s no arrangement of the facts where that isn’t true. I brace my hands on the counter and drop my head. I close my eyes for a second, and I try, the way I’ve tried a hundred times in three weeks, to work out what he’d say.

I don’t know. That’s the honest answer. I used to know everything that man thought.

What I do know is that every time she curls into me like she trusts me completely, something shifts in a way I can’t control. Something that has nothing to do with guilt and everything to do with wanting.

That’s the problem. She thinks I’ve made peace with Tyler, prison…everything. I let her think that.

I push off the counter and drag my shirt on, like putting fabric between me and the smell of her on my skin will help.

It doesn’t. She’s too far in.

And whether I like it or not, I’m not pulling away.

Chapter Five

Tatum

I shouldn’t feel like this. Not this quickly. Not this completely. But I do.

I lie back against my dorm bed, staring up at the ceiling while my thoughts circle the same place they always land lately. Lachlan. Everything leads back to him. Every quiet moment. Every pause in my day.

I’ve known I was in love with him since the night he sat in the dark in this room and asked me what my days look like. That part isn’t the question anymore.

The question is whether he’ll ever say it back. Or whether he even can.

Sometimes, he looks at me like I’m everything. Like I’m the only thing he sees. And other times, he pulls back so fast it’s like I imagined all of it.

My phone rings. The sound cuts straight through my swirling thoughts, and I jolt slightly before reaching for it on instinct.

My heart lifts when I see his name, a smile already pulling at my lips.

“Hi,” I answer, trying and failing to keep the excitement out of my voice.

There’s a pause. “Hey, kitten”

His voice is lower, rougher, like he just woke up or hasn’t spoken in a while. It settles something inside me instantly.

“What are you doing?” he asks.

I shift onto my side, tucking the phone closer to my ear. “I just got back from class,” I say, unable to stop the small smile still lingering on my lips. “What about you?”

“Nothing.” Typical.

I huff softly. “That’s not an answer.”

“It is,” he replies.

I roll my eyes even though he can’t see it. “You’re impossible.”

“Yeah,” he says, and there’s a faint hint of amusement in his voice. “You’re still on the phone.”