Page 101 of Blitz

She pins me with a look. “It’s a Saturday night. When I knocked on your door, what were you doing?”

“It’s Valentine’s Day. Date night. I don’t have anywhere to go.”

“There’s a singles’ party at the ASC.”

“I’m not ready to date other people,” I tell her flatly. “Eventually I’ll get there. I’m not ready. That’s not to say I won’t be. Dave thinks it’s a good idea if I’m single for a while.”

I need to learn how to function on my own again, without her ghost watching over my shoulder. I need to move on. As much as I don’t want to, I think I need to.

I thought Mason and I were going to spend the rest of our lives together. Now that that’s not happening, I have to figure out what I want for myself. Not only when it comes to a romantic partner, but also as a partner in life.

“I don’t think you should date anyone else,” she says. “I think you should date me.”

I laugh. It isn’t funny. “We’ve tried that. Twice. It doesn’t work, baby.”

“We didn’t date,” she corrects me. “We jumped straight into a relationship. We can start with casual dating. We can agree to being together, that we won’t see other people, and still feel each other out all over again. We won’t have sex until my head’s on straight. We’ll date. We can date.”

“Mason…”

“And besides,” she says, shooting me a saucy grin, “the third time is always the charm.”

“We can’t date.”

She pouts at me. “Why is that?”

“Because you waited. You let me believe I was going crazy, imagining you on campus, and all this time you were right here in front of me.”

Chapter forty-two

Mason

“Yeah, I did,” I admit freely.

“And you never mentioned it,” he accuses.

“I didn’t know how.”

He spreads his arms wide. “You’ve been on campus since August. Why the fuck did I not know about you being here until January?”

“Because I wasn’t ready!”

He blinks at me.

“I came here for you. Is that what you want to hear? I transferred to Newton because of you,” I snap. “There were other reasons, this is the program I wanted to begin with and the coach is awesome, but that was one of the big reasons. And then I chickened out. I saw you hanging out with Sam and this other chick and—”

“What other chick?”

“I don’t know, she was tall and skinny and gorgeous.”

He frowns. “I don’t know who that is.”

I wave a hand. “It’s not important. It was in November, right after midterms.”

“Wait a minute…” He scratches at his beard. “Do you mean Mackenzie?”

“I don’t know? You were in the dining hall, and she was sitting next to you, and you looked so happy…” My stomach churns remembering how awful that moment felt.

“Mack is Miles’s sister. She was visiting for a weekend,” he says slowly. “She’ll be a freshman here next year.”