Total pages in book: 155
Estimated words: 145634 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 728(@200wpm)___ 583(@250wpm)___ 485(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 145634 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 728(@200wpm)___ 583(@250wpm)___ 485(@300wpm)
I shrug and say, “He was a year older, so I had another year to go before I could leave.” I try to make it lighthearted and joking, but her next question destroys my attempt to sway the questioning.
“What happened that drove you two apart?”
She asks the question I didn’t want to hear. But I’m prepared for it. I open my mouth to repeat the words, the script I’ve drilled into my brain for this particular moment.
My lips part and I take in a small breath, but the words are absent.
Fuck. I forget the lines.
“He did something that really hurt me.” I shake my head no, closing my eyes and trying to remember anything about our past except that night. “That’s not it, I’m sorry,” I say and press my fingers into the lines creasing my forehead. “We didn’t go well together. Always fighting and then I thought …” Damn it. I wish I could just think of something. I open my eyes and see everyone watching. What did I already say? Shit, I can’t remember.
“We broke up because we just weren’t meant to be,” I tell her and it shatters my composure. I don’t lie. At least I try not to. But that’s the worst lie I’ve ever told.
“Oh dear, I can tell this is hard for you,” Margo says and plucks a tissue from the box beside her chair, passing it to me. “Take your time, Harlow,” she says as she tilts her head with sympathy. Of the two of us, she’s the better actress right now.
I was a dumbass to think this interview would be anything other than a predator prying for information to gossip about.
I shake my head and breathe out deeply before saying, “We were oil and water back in high school. All we did was fight. I can’t remember what the last one was about.” I shrug and add, “But we didn’t get back together like we did all the times before.”
“Oh, so you were on-again, off-again?” she asks and I nod, thankful that she’s letting the question go. “I imagine that’s the way it is dating the bad boy in high school.”
I huff as I roll my eyes. I never thought of him that way. Not once. There was something else though. Something that crackled between us and drew me to him.
“He wasn’t really a bad boy, to be honest. He was quiet and kept to himself,” I say as I remember the first time I looked behind me in class. I can still feel his eyes on me and how he refused to let my gaze go. “There was an air about him that told me he was bad, but he didn’t really get into trouble. He was just from the bad side of town; you know?”
I answer as if I’m talking to a friend, and that’s a mistake.
“He was arrested though,” she says as she places her pen down and pushes her glasses up the bridge of her nose. “I would say that’s a bad thing, wouldn’t you?”
“That was after we broke up,” I say defensively.
It was months later that he started doing stupid shit. It was one fight after another once we split up. He was expelled after a fight that ended with the other kid’s nose being broken. I found out later it was because Matt was talking shit about me. I thought maybe I could approach him then, but he’d never been colder to me than that day I showed up at his house.
Even worse, he got caught for stealing, not once but twice and the second time was when they locked him up. When I first saw him being arrested, I thought the cops had found out the truth, but turns out it was just petty theft and we’d gotten away with everything. It didn’t make anything feel better; it didn’t make anything right.
“Oh, is that so? Do you think the breakup had anything to do with his outbursts?” she asks and I don’t have an answer.
Again, my mouth parts but the words just hang there, refusing to leave me. I never thought about it like that. I remember thinking he wasn’t the boy I loved. That he was someone else.
I never thought it was all an act.
Blinking away the memories and confusion, I start to tell her that we were just two young and dumb high school kids, to try and blow off her questioning, but when I raise my eyes I catch sight of him watching me.
The cold in his gaze is back and it sends a chill down my spine.
With that look, I know I’ve said something I shouldn’t have, but I don’t know what.
CHAPTER 13
Nathan
All I keep thinking about is Hally implying I wasn’t a bad guy until I left her. You do stupid shit when you blame yourself and you’re convinced you aren’t worth a damn thing.