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“Nah, I’m okay.” He straightens and shoots me a fainter version of his earlier grin. “Really, dude. What I was gonna say was, I want you to come to me when you need something.”
“Why? You barely know me.” I keep my hand on his shoulder, not sure he’s as steady as he tries to convince me he is. “You have enough on your hands with Nate and Syd. I know you take care of them. Trust me, that’s more important than anything else.”
“You are important, West.” He’s looking straight into my eyes, and familiar heat seeps through me. “Don’t you see?”
How to explain I’m not sure if what I see, what I feel, is real or an illusion?
I take a step back. “Thanks… thanks for coming over.”
“Promise to come see us, dude.”
“Yeah, okay,” I say, and feel lighter than I have in months. “I promise.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Sydney
I’ve been so worried. Between Nate’s breakdown, the worry over West and Kash being sick—and then making out with West, being shoved away by Nate, and that one kiss with Kash from forever ago still burning in my mind like a star—I can’t focus on anything.
School is a blur, work isn’t much better. The ice cream parlor is bustling, kids yelling and moms trying to get them what they want. I give a customer the wrong flavors, a kid starts to scream like the world is ending, and the manager chews me out.
Rightly, too. At this rate, I’m a hazard to the business.
“This is lurve,” Sara says, nudging me with her hip out of the way and making the next cone.
“What? No.”
“You’re daydreaming with your eyes open. I know the signs. So who’s the lucky guy?”
If only it was only one.
“Is it the guy who walks you home sometimes? The movie star?”
That’d be Kash. Ever since that first time he came to make sure I got home safe he’s made a tradition of it—at least on the days he has time. He works so hard.
Who is he, really? Of the boys, he’s the one I know practically nothing about. Kash Graham. Older than me by three years. I’m about to turn nineteen this year so he must be twenty-two by now.
No family he wants to talk about. Smokes weed to handle anxiety attacks. Pretty as a bad angel. Speaks Russian. Had valuables with him that he sold to help us get by—stolen goods? Family heirlooms?
But it doesn’t matter that I don’t know the guys’ secrets. I care for them. I want them. And even if all three wanted me, really wanted to be with me, how could I choose?
I can’t. I can’t lose their friendship. Then I’d be losing everything. They’re all the family I have.
My mom has never come back. I wonder sometimes if she ever thinks of me or if she has forgotten she has a daughter. Why didn’t she ever come back? Is she even alive? What if she’s lying cold and lifeless somewhere and I’ll never know? What if she started a new life and a new family somewhere?
I guess I might never know.
If Kash is a mystery, Nate is breaking my heart with the nightmares he’s been having night after night. The way he jerked away from me as we’d kissed, the panic in his eyes… I shiver at the possibilities and I pray it’s not what I fear, though the way he flinches whenever I touch him would make a sort of sick sense if it were.
Oh God… No, not going to think about that. No way.
But the need to talk to someone about what happened is eating at me, and I hesitate to tell West.
West, who had his big, rough hand down my panties, making me come, his tongue in my mouth, whose hard cock I touched.
Heat washes through me every time I remember it.
But yeah. Nate. He’s been on my mind so much these past days—his reluctant confessions in the kitchen, the frustrating refusal to tell us what has really happened to him, in what ways he was hurt, and then his nightmares, his obvious desire and violent reaction.
