“Don’t go there, Allie.”
“I can go wherever I want.” I raised my voice but tried to remind myself to calm down. He didn’t deserve to see how affected I was by him. He and Eli and everyone else at the campground had already gotten to see how affected I was when I found out the truth. “I have tiptoed over talking about our past with you for so long that I’m freaking sick of it. I wasn’t the one who cheated on your mom, and I wasn’t the one who tried to kill herself, Carson.”
He winced, and I knew I should have stopped. But this was a conversation we should have had a long time ago.
“I was your friend and you pushed me away because you needed someone to put the blame on for how hurt you were. I used to be fine with taking that from you, but I’m not anymore.” I straightened my spine. “Grow the hell up, Carson.”
I turned my back on him again when he didn’t reply and headed to the hallway, even though being in this house with him was the absolute last place I wanted to be.
But I stopped dead in my tracks at the next sound of his voice.
“If he touches you, I’ll kill him.”
“What?” I looked over my shoulder, and he was staring at me like he actually meant what he was saying.
“Eli. If he lays a single finger on you, I will kill him.”
Then he walked back the way he came, and I focused on my work.
Chapter Two
Carson
I was so damn ready for this day to be over.
I couldn’t focus on what our teacher was talking about. I hadn’t heard a single word from her in over an hour. Instead, I tapped my pencil against my notebook and tried not to think about Allie.
But that was impossible.
Every single thought I had these days was about her. About how badly I had fucked things up with her. I obsessed over how mad she was, over how I could possibly get her to forgive me, and how I couldn’t sleep because she wouldn’t talk to me.
The final bell rang, and I snatched my shit up from my desk and was out of the room before anyone else. I felt like I was suffocating in there.
I was suffocating everywhere except when I was with her, and even then, it was torturous. Because she refused to even speak to me.
Not since that first day she came back to our community service, and I was pretty sure I was running out of those silent days with her. Mr. Sneed hadn’t yet told us when he was going to let us off the hook for our community service, but the house was already looking like a different place altogether.
He told us yesterday that he would have paint ready for us to paint over the signature wall when we got there tomorrow, and I was dreading it. She had done nothing but nodded her head, then left without a single word to me.
Mr. Sneed had given me a look of sympathy, and I knew that I was really fucked then.
I pushed through the locker room, and it was still silent. I shoved my shit into my locker before pulling out my practice gear. Being at baseball practice was the last place I wanted to be, but I knew that it would do me good.
It would take away some of that pent-up anger I couldn’t seem to get under control. Even smoking and drinking hadn’t helped, and trust me, I had tried. Olly was still a little pissed off after he had to take care of my drunk ass last weekend.
But as soon as I woke up the next morning, I had felt exactly the same. Worse almost.
And part of me had thought about just taking any girl up on their offer and trying my hardest to fuck the thoughts of Allie away, but I couldn’t. Just thinking about it made me sick.
I couldn’t do it after everything that had happened between us. Even if she hated me now. I didn’t know how I could possibly touch another girl again, and that fucked with my head more than anything.
I was so damn wrapped up in her that nothing that used to matter to me mattered anymore.
I had been so worried about not getting too dependent on her and her on me that I didn’t realize I was falling for her all along while simultaneously pushing her away. Now I was the one who needed her, and she didn’t need or want a single thing from me.
The guys started filtering into the locker room, and I took a deep breath as I tried to prepare myself to face them. Eli and Lucas smirked and dug at me any chance they could. They knew that I had fucked up and that their stupid little fucking plan had been my downfall all along.
Beck and Olly had wanted to kill Eli after he told Allie the truth about what I had done, but it was pointless. He was telling her the damn truth while I was hiding it from her. I had painted him as the villain, but he wasn’t any more villainous than I was.
Allie had been my best friend once, and I had still chosen to go through with my fucked-up plan. It didn’t matter that I had started it as a way to keep them away from her; I knew what I was doing. I was desperate to be around her, to have an excuse to have her in my life again, and I took advantage of the situation.
And when things changed, when they had become more, I should have been honest with her, but I wasn’t. And I took things too far.
I took things from her that I didn’t deserve. She gave those things to me, and I knew she regretted that decision now.
And that was what hurt the most out of all of this. Allie had given me her body, her trust, she had given me things that she hadn’t ever given to anyone else, and I ruined every bit of it.
And even though I wanted to kill both Eli and Lucas, I knew that it was my fault. I could blame them all I wanted but everything that happened between Allie and me was my fault. I knew that fact as well as she did.
Because Allie hadn’t even looked at Eli after she found out. His betrayal hadn’t bothered her at all. It was me and my lies that had broken her. It was me and my lies that had fucked everything up.
I would always fuck everything up when it came to her. That was who I was. Eli may not have been good enough for her, but neither was I.
“What are you doing?” Beck tossed his bag down on the bench before opening his own locker and pulling out his gear.
“Just getting ready for practice.” I pulled on my cleats and tried to focus on tying the laces. I tried to focus on anything other than the repetitive what-ifs that ran through my head. “Where’s Olly?”
“I don’t know.” Beck threw his button-down into the locker before pulling an old t-shirt over his head. “He’s been a bit distant lately. I think something might be going on with him.”
I winced because, who the hell didn’t have something going on at this point? But also, because I knew that the only thing Olly wanted to have going on was something with Frankie, and that was never going to happen. “Hopefully he’s just getting laid or something.”
“I was hoping that you’d be the one getting laid.” Beck pulled his cleats out of his locker and sat down beside me. “You’ve been in a bad fucking mood.”
“Yeah. I’m aware.” I looked over at my best friend and part of me just wanted to unload everything on him, but this wasn’t the time or the place. And I wasn’t sure if I was willing to let Beck or Olly in on all the shit I had going on in my head. “But I don’t really think getting laid is the answer right now.”
“Since when?” Beck looked at me, really looked at me, and I knew that he was trying to figure out what was going through my head. Beck always knew when something was off with me. “You know if you fuck things up further with Allie that the girls are going to kill you, right?”