“My life is none of your business anymore.” I grabbed my tennis shoes and stood up.
“You know, I used to be jealous of everyone,” he admitted. “Trent, because he lived next door. Gina, because she got to have sleepovers with you and listen to all your secrets. Hell, I was even jealous of your parents. They got to be in the house with you every night. I loved being with you. Even after. When you’d pretend to sleep instead of talking to me. I just wanted you to know I was there. But you turned to Max.”
“You turned to Gina,” I snapped.
We spoke at the same time and said the same thing.
“He understood.”
“She understood.”
Gray couldn’t leave it at that. “That night on the beach,” he said. “The night you caught us kissing.”
“You were on top of her.”
Gray dug his hands into his dark hair. “Yeah, I know. Not that it matters now, but we didn’t sleep together. It was only that one kiss, and I was wasted. And you should know”—Gray chewed on one of his knuckles—“she punched me afterward. We were just talking about Trent and she said she was lonely and I said I was lonely and then all of a sudden I was kissing her. And then, I’ll be damned if you weren’t there watching.”
If words could give someone vertigo, these made my world swim. “Are you drunk now?” I asked.
“Maybe a little,” he admitted. “All I’m saying is, don’t be mad at Gina. I was the cheating asshole.” He pulled that quote from one of my past verbal assaults.
“I was lonely too,” I said. I wanted to grab him by the shirt and yell, Look at me! but I didn’t. So I turned off my anger and asked, “Gray, why are you telling me this now? We’ve both moved on. There’s no magic time machine.”
“No, there’s not.” He sounded very sober. “I’ve been worried about you, Sade. And maybe Max will make you happier now that he’s back, but I can’t get you off my mind.”
“I don’t need checking on.”
“Maybe you don’t . . . but maybe I still need to check. You were my life for . . . most of my life.”
Then he said the magic, terrible words.
“I still love you, Sadie Kingston.”
What was I supposed to do with that? I mean, I still loved him, too, in a way—how could I not? But, this was the one area in which I’d made forward progress. I wanted to protect that.
The three words I said were not the I love you too he wanted.
“I gotta go.”
He caught my arm, just above Tennessee, the scar at my elbow. Before I could stop him, he closed his eyes and kissed me hard on the mouth.
“I’ve wanted to do that for months—”
“But you didn’t until now.” Pain replaced my anger. “Do you know how that felt?”
Do you know how it feels that you, you of all people, won’t look at me?
“I couldn’t deal,” he admitted. “But Sadie, if you need me . . .”
How nice to have the option of not dealing! I held his eyes for two seconds with a stone-cold gaze. “I needed you eight months ago. I’m a little over it now.”
If we kept having conversations like this, I’d be writing Forgive Gina and Gray for the next decade.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I woke up the next morning before everyone in my house, but not before the sun. The run from last night must have done its job better than I expected. After I left Gray, I ran farther than I’d ever gone, before turning around.
Gray’s words swam through my brain. I still love you, Sadie Kingston.
When he said that, I remembered the boy I’d fallen in love with rather than the one who hurt me.
It took me a long time to tell Gray I loved him—five years, to be exact—but I knew it the summer after fourth grade. It happened at a paint-your-own-pottery camp. I roamed through various summer camps in elementary school—everything from surfing to creative writing to science. Mom needed somewhere to put me while she worked, and I needed something to obsess over.