Total pages in book: 185
Estimated words: 191421 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 957(@200wpm)___ 766(@250wpm)___ 638(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 191421 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 957(@200wpm)___ 766(@250wpm)___ 638(@300wpm)
And I do.
I go in search of Lucas.
And as I walk, I tell my heart to stop beating for Reign when I’m going to see his best friend. I tell my mind to focus on the task at hand and not at the fact that he saved Lucas once upon a time.
By the time I see Lucas, I’ve managed to get all my thoughts under control.
Like Reign said, Lucas is alone except for this one guy with him, and they’re both sort of huddled together at the edge of the party, in a secluded area. But when they see me coming, the guy leaves and Lucas stands there, his eyes pinned on me.
“Hi,” I say, reaching him.
“You’re here.”
“I came to see you.”
“Another apology?”
“No.”
“Good.”
“Last time it didn’t go so well.”
His lips twitch at my morose statement. “No, it didn’t.”
A very subtle movement but my heart leaps in my chest. “So I was wondering…” I wring my hands, debating how to best put it. “Uh, I’m probably, definitely, the last person you want to see right now but I was wondering if we could just… talk? I know you’re going through a hard time and you don’t… you don’t have to talk about that if you don’t want to. You probably don’t want to and… We can talk about something else, anything, catch up?” God, that sounds awful, catch up, as if all we had been was distant friends and nothing more. “Or you know, whatever.”
I wait for him to reject me.
This is even worse than the apology that I’d given him the other night.
I might as well turn around now and go back.
But as it happens, I don’t have to because he says, “Okay.”
“What?”
He roves his eyes over my features. “Let’s talk.”
My heart leaps in my chest again. “Oh, uh, okay.” I smile hesitantly then. “Okay, I —”
“Nice dress,” he interrupts me, his blue eyes flicking up and down my body.
“Thanks,” I say, trying to feel relaxed now that we’re talking. “It’s your favorite color.”
“And that’s why you wore it.”
The fact that he knows makes me blush.
It’s not as if it was hard to guess though. That I wore this color for him or that my hair’s framing my face because he likes it that way.
Which makes me realize something super obvious.
In the two years that I dated him, I wore blue a lot. I wore blue more than I wore pink, which is my favorite color. Even when I went out with my friends, I wore his favorite color. And I kept my hair loose even though I’ve always preferred braids.
I knew I did it all to make him happy. He was my boyfriend and I wanted to give him everything. So I wore the color he liked; I listened to the music he’d pick out; I didn’t talk about NYU even though that’s always been my dream school; or about what book I was reading at the time, because early on when we started dating he told me books put him to sleep and he preferred sports.
I never did anything that might bring conflict between us.
Except that night.
When I said no.
Why I’m thinking about this right now or why it feels like such a big revelation, I don’t know, but I am and it does.
“And that’s why you wore your hair like that,” he says, tipping his chin up.
“I… I’m…”
“What do you want, Echo?”
His abrupt question makes me jump. “What?”
“You want something, don’t you,” he says, his eyes and his tone both inscrutable. “And before you say you want to apologize or catch up, I’m going to stop you and tell you that I don’t believe you.”
“I…”
He waits for me to answer but I’m too chickenshit to say anything. “You what?”
I know the answer to his question.
I’ve thought of nothing else but the answer to his question ever since he came back to town. But how do you put it into words? How do you say, hey, I want you to stop screwing up your life and also forgive your best friend who’s always been like a brother to you and so let’s get back together, in a nice and tactful way?
“Did you miss me, Echo?” he asks while I’m still silent and thinking.
And I grab that lifeline like I’m truly dying. “Yes. God, yes. I did.”
He takes a step toward me. “Me too.”
My heart is drumming in my chest with his nearness. “Y-you did?”
He keeps inching closer. “I did, yeah. I loved you, didn’t I?”
Loved.
Past tense.
Because I threw away that love like it meant nothing. I made that happen and so I suppress the sting I feel at that, the sadness.
“I loved you too. So much,” I tell him, trying to inject all the emotions that I’m feeling into my voice.
He stares into my eyes, his lips parted, his chest moving with slow but long breaths. “I think I have an idea.”