AllFreeNovel
Share Us
With that, I open the door and storm into the hallway. I’ve never said something so crass before, I don’t evenswear, but I don’t have it in me to care. The air out here is lighter now that I’m away from Faye’s stormy tension, but it does nothing to ease the burning in my chest or the thoughts spinning around in my head. Adam’s not here anymore, so he must’ve given up when he saw Faye was all right and yelling at him. I guess that means the kissing him strategy worked, even if it wasn’t in the way I intended and caused a fight between me and my best friend, the biggest one we’ve ever had.
Something shiny on the floor catches my eye, and I pick up a key card. The room number on the back is Adam’s—he must have dropped it. Do I bring it back to him? Can I face him after I threw myself at him?
But he kissed me back.
I square my shoulders and cross the hall to his room. I’m going to have to talk to him sooner or later, and I guess while I’m in this confrontational mood, it’s going to be sooner.
SEVENTEEN
Night Four of Cuba
Faye
The door slams shut behind Lori, and the silence that fills the room in her absence is almost louder than our arguing.
“Can you believe her?” I ask Kellan, pacing to burn off some of this energy. “Lori and Adam? Lori and mybrother?”
Kellan doesn’t say anything, just watches me as I process everything that happened in the last five minutes.
“Does she actuallylikehim? How could she? It’sAdam. She knows he hates me! And did she forget he let his girlfriend torture us for four years? Because I sure didn’t!”
“Faye . . .” Kellan starts, but I’m not done with my rant; my brain’s moving at a hundred miles a minute.
“And what was that whole thing about her stopping Adam from finding us? We had it under control!” Right? He wouldn’t have come in to find Kellan; he didn’t know he was in here. Lori didn’t have to kiss him unless she wanted to, and apparently, she wanted to.
“Would it really be terrible if Lori and Adam got together?” he asks quietly.
I stop my pacing to stare at him. “Yes! She’s my best friend!
She can’t be with my brother.”
“That’s a little hypocritical, don’t you think?” he asks in a tone more sad than accusing.
Hypocritical? How am I being hypocritical? He says nothing, only looks at me with a grim face as his words sink in, and then I get it.
“No. No, we’re different. This is different.”
A muscle in his jaw jumps. “How, Faye? Everything you said about Lori and Adam is everything you’re afraid that Adam’s going to say, and here you are, telling Lori who she can and can’t be with because she’s your best friend and Adam is your brother. We’re in that same position. If you really believe what you told Lori, then that means you considerusbeing together wrong.”
My heart leaps into my throat. I didn’t think about it like that, and that’s not what I meant at all. Of course I don’t think being with Kellan is wrong; nothing about the way he makes me feel is wrong. But thinking aboutmyAdam withmyLori set something off inside me that still angers me to think about.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” I tell Kellan. “We—we’re different,” I add pathetically, not knowing what to say, how to get him to stop looking at me like that, like I’m a disappointment.
He’s quiet for a moment. “Do you really think I thought of you as a cheap hookup?”
A pang runs through my chest. I don’t even remember saying that.
My silence must confirm it for Kellan because he shakes his head. “Is that how you think of me? That I just wanted you as some quick fuck? That I never actually cared about you?”
That’s exactly what I’ve been thinking this whole vacation, but I can’t say it out loud, especially not now that he’s making it seem like the thought is preposterous. But I can’t get off the hook by not answering this time, so I find my voice, even if it comes out small, and say, “You wanted to keep us a secret.”
“No,youwanted to keep it a secret. I’m not good enough for the great Fayanna Murray.” He shakes his head again, and the way he’s looking at me is so different from how he was when we first got into my room tonight. I craved that look, needed it to breathe, but now his look makes my skin go cold, makes me feel like shrinking into myself. He continues, “I wanted to be with you. You’re worth the fight I’d get into with your brother, you’re worth everything.
You’rethe one who was only ever interested in sex.”
“That—that’s not true,” I say, my voice shaky. “You didn’t want people to know. You didn’t want us to be exclusive.”
His laugh is humorless. “I’ve wanted to be with you since I was sixteen. It was obvious you never felt the same way, so I said nothing, but then we slept together, and I thought you finally felt the same way, at least until you demanded that I tell no one what happened. I wasyourdirty little secret, not the other way around, Faye. And the fucked-up part of it all is that I’m so crazy about you I didn’t even care. I’d keep being your dirty little secret for as long as you wanted, as long as it made you happy, as long as I could keep being near you.”
