Page 7 of Barron's Second Chance
He lifted his head; his gaze held so much. Love, regret, pain, guilt. But it was too late. There was no coming back from this.
"It honestly just happened."
Her breath huffed out in disbelief. "Just happened?" She spat out. "You just happened to slip your dick into Lissa?"
"No!" He quickly cried; he reached to touch her but stopped as her body jerked back in response.
"I haven't slept with her."
Yet.
That word hung between them, heavy in the air.
"Right." She rolled her eyes. "You just cuddled her on your lap and made out with her in the pool. That's okay, then." She jabbed her finger into his chest. "Fuck you, you coward."
She turned to storm out. She had to get out of here. She could still hear peals of laughter coming from the pool.
"Eden." The plea from his lips sounded tortured.
She stopped but refused to turn around. Tears were streaming down her face, and she was afraid to so much as sniff. She refused to cry in front of him.
Eden felt his body heat come closer to her. She held herself still, determined not to show any emotion.
"Eden. I love you so much. I'm so sorry you saw that."
Not sorry for what hedidbut for what shesaw.
She continued to hold still, her breath suspended, waiting for what he was going to pin her with next.
"But we've been together for so long. Things with Lissa got carried away -"
Eden slammed his front door behind her, ignoring his pleas for her to stop. She didn't want to hear what he would say next. She had more self-respect than to stand around listening to bullshit.
She made it the two blocks back to her place, called out calmly to her Mom that she was home, and walked composedly toward her room. She quietly closed the door and lightly lay on her neatly made bed. She curled herself into a ball, buried her head in her hands, and cried.
3
It’ll Get Better
Thefirstfewweeksof school were hell for Eden. By the time Senior Year started, their whole class had heard the news that the Golden Couple had split up. More specifically, that Barron had cheated on her with Lissa and dumped her over the summer.
Eden kept her head down, determined to ignore the looks of pity from her friends and the rest of the student body. She also didn’t want to see the arrogant and satisfied smirks from Lissa and her band of idiots. And she definitely didn’t want to see Barron around school withheror his new group of buddies.
Barron never reached out to his former friends - their friends - and he dropped all pretense of being too busy to hang out, as he had told them over the Summer. He made his message very clear when he chose to sit near Brad and his crew during classes and at their very loud and crowded table during lunch break.
Message received, loud and clear.
The only time she made eye contact with Barron was on their third week back from Summer break. She had kept her head down, pretending to fiddle on her phone in order not to see the looks of empathy on the faces of her fellow peers.
A peal of obnoxious laughter sounded near her, and on instinct, she lifted her head towards the noise.
Big mistake.
The laughter was coming from Lissa and Maria, chatting animatedly against their locker. Too late, she noticed the figure beside Lissa, his body turning towards the crowd of students. What drew her gaze was his strong, large hand clasped firmly in Lissa's smaller, red finger-nailed hand. The image was so jarring that it took a few seconds for her brain to compute what she was seeing.
She knew. Of course, she knew that Barron and Lissa had become a full-blown couple. Or, at least whatever he had been doing with her, he was now doing it with Lissa.
But until now, she managed to avoid seeing it thrown in her face, poolside make-out aside. Now, there was no denying that Barron was no longer hers. For some reason, something as simple as hand-holding seemed more intimate than the kiss she had witnessed. At least then, she could pretend that it was a summer fling. Hand-holding in the hallway of their school in front of the student body? Now that was sending a message.
