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“How does that make any sense?”
He paced the room, unable to be still for longer than a minute. “I know you.Andyou’re acting a lot like Kreed right now when he was all tore up over she-who-must-not-be-named.”
I shot him a droll glance. “Funny. Just drop it, Mas.” The entire point of my being in the gym was to forget the name Mallory Hales, but my brother seemed hellbent on making me think about things I’d like to pretend never existed.
But it didn’t help. Nothing would. Because Mason might be fucking right.
Maybe I did like her. Or had.
It didn’t change what she had done…the lies.
“Fuck,” I muttered.
Mason clapped a hand on my shoulder, his grip firm. “Yeah,” he agreed quietly. “Fuck indeed, brother.”
31
MALLORY
Istared at the ceiling, unmoving, my body leaden against the mattress as my thoughts looped the same scene over and over again, stuck on repeat like a record with a scratch. I should be stressed about being attacked tonight, and yet that took a back burner in my head next to my charade being exposed.
The precise second when the pieces clicked together and the look on Maddox’s face lived rent-free in my mind. I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to block out the memory, refusing to shed another damn single tear. I’d cried plenty enough Friday night after he left and most of Saturday. I’d barely left my room.
But no matter how much I willed my eyes to stay dry, tears stung them. Apparently, I had more feelings to purge. Some moments, it felt as if the waterworks would never stop, and I couldn’t quite figure out why I was so worked up over a boy.
Yes, I liked him.
Yes, what I’d done was so pathetic and stupid, but I’d naively thought I wouldn’t be hurting anyone. Little did I know that the person who would be hurt the most by my actions was me.
I deserved it.
Jade curled against my side, purring softly as if she was doing her hardest to cheer me up, trying to spread some of her joy. My universe had collapsed around me. It might take a bit more than her tiny kisses to heal the pain inflicting my heart.
I could have lied to him about what I’d done. And hell, maybe I should have. Looking back with the brutal clarity of hindsight, lying might have been better than the truth. It might have preserved whatever fragile thing we’d been building.
Except lying was why I was in this mess.
Now he hated me.
And I couldn’t blame him.
What I’d done was stupid. Reckless. It went too far. I didn’t recognize myself in the girl who’d orchestrated it. I never meant to carry it to the point it went. I hadn’t planned for weeks of escalation, but the more danger I seemed to be in, the closer I got to Maddox, and the more he looked at me. The more I liked it.
Totally fucked. I know.
But my brain couldn’t seem to process Maddox liking me any other way. He had a fiercely protective streak but only toward those close to him. Iwanted to be close to him. So, yeah, I made up the whole stalker thing, making sure he was always there when the stalker struck. Well, when I struck.
I pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes hard enough to see stars, pressure building behind my eyeballs until it hurt. It was so calculating. So monumentally, catastrophically stupid.
An idea sparked by Keegan. So I wrote the first note and stuffed it inside my textbook, knowing Maddox would see it because he couldn’t be bothered to bring his own book to class. His reaction had been better than I hoped, and the whole thing snowballed.
Each time, I told myself it would be the last.
Pathetic excuses.
It hadn’t been as hard as I imagined, slipping notes into my textbooks, planting them into my locker, or writing the message on the bathroom mirror. Those had been easy. The pizza delivery took a bit more planning and still worked out better than I dreamed, yet it was also my downfall.
Using one of my mom’s knives had been foolish. I’d gotten too comfortable and let my guard down. I learned more from Mom than she would care to know, but I’d still made a mistake, and now I was paying for it.
