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Chapter Twenty-Five
Sydney
I stare after Nate long after he’s walked out of the room, and the apartment. There’s a hole the size of the planet in my stomach.
What just happened? I feel as if the ground is crumbling under my feet. The knowledge that Nate, my Nate, has been hurt so badly is carving me up inside like a rusty knife.
Kash looks equally stunned. He’s leaning against the counter, eyes wide, looking at nothing, red splotches of color on his otherwise ashen cheeks.
“Come here,” he says after a moment, and I shake my head.
Last night I went in to talk to him about West, about his father’s threatening attitude, though what went down between West and me… that was another reason. West kissing me. Touching me. Making me come. And then his strong body arching against mine as he found his release.
I feel hot all over just thinking about it. It felt wonderful.
And bad. For some reason I feel as if I cheated on Nate. And Kash.
Which is ridiculous. But I somehow thought I’d tell Nate, get it off my chest. Confess. But the way Nate looked at me last night was like I was a sugary morsel, and he wanted a bite. He was hard, it was impossible to miss it, as he looked at me clad only in my towel.
But he all but kicked me out. I was so mad at him—and then it turned out he’d been laid out with a bad migraine all night. That he was worried about West, after all, despite his claims to the contrary. That, and his confession that his dad did hurt him, or had something to do with it, that his scars are from an attempt to escape when he was but a little kid… and my heart feels so heavy.
I let him down. The guy who was putting money under my door all those months so I could stay, so I could wait for my mom even though I knew she wasn’t coming back.
“Syd,” Kash says hoarsely, and this time I go to him and let him pull me into his arms. “It will be okay.”
Will it? How?
“Give him time,” Kash whispers, as if he can read my mind, his heart pounding against my ear through his powerful chest, his T-shirt warm and smelling of spicy deodorant and Kash. “It’s the first time he has talked about it. It’s a start.”
I nod, the feel of his arms around me both comforting and exciting. “He trusts you.”
“He trusts you too, Red. But you’re the girl he wants. He doesn’t want to appear weak to you.”
“Weak? He’s the most stubborn, pig-headed jerk I’ve ever met.”
Kash chuckles, the sound rumbling in my ear.
The girl he wants.
If so, why is he pushing me away all the time?
I think again of his scars and burrow closer to Kash’s warmth. It makes no sense that I feel so protective of Nate. He’s a guy, so much bigger and stronger than me, almost a man, just like Kash.
But it’s the child he was that I feel so protective of. The playful boy I caught glimpses of when I first met him, now buried in a fortress of stone. Now I understand the walls he’s been guarding his heart with. But what the hell happened to him?
Why won’t he say?
Over the next days, I see West at school. He greets me and acts all normal, like he didn’t have his hand in my panties, in me, like he didn’t kiss me like he was thirsty for me.
Like I didn’t kiss him and touch him back, like I didn’t see him bared and hard for me.
It’s weird. But I’m so confused right now—with how my heart aches for him, and for Nate, and with the memory of Kash’s kiss still burning in my mind almost a year later. My thoughts, my feelings are cartwheeling, spinning out of orbit, crashing all over the place.
Even worse, when I ask about Nate’s dad, West tells me nothing else happened, and not to worry. When I ask about his granddad and sister, he doesn’t answer. When I lean close to him during the bio lab, he pulls away.
I can’t. Three boys, gorgeous, kind, complex. Confusing the hell out of me. They’re hot and cold, showing me one thing, and then the other. I care for them, all three of them. I want them happy.
But how?
