Faked - Karla Sorensen Page 0,77

too."

She sagged in relief. "No, it's okay that you were upset. You had every right to be."

"Maybe I was channeling my inner Lia." I smiled. "I don't know where that stubborn streak came from."

My sister swiped at her face and laughed. "I know, right?"

I let out a sigh that came from so far down in my soul that Lia laughed again.

"I don't know what I'm supposed to do with all these," I motioned to my chest, "feelings."

Lia braced her arms on her thighs and leaned toward me. "Okay, talk to me. Tell me everything. I mean, maybe not like, sex details. But ... what happened while you were gone?"

Then she patted the bed.

My entire being settled back into place as Lia and I braced our backs against the wall. She curled her hand around mine with our legs stretched out straight onto my bed, and I unloaded for the next hour.

After a bit, she leaned her head on my shoulder, and I set my head on hers, and we fell quiet before I got to the scene in the driveway. I didn't even attempt to wipe the tears coming down my face during that part.

"I'm so mad at him for leaving," I said, voice hoarse from talking. "But I get it. I don't want to, but I do."

"I don't."

I nudged her. "I don't need you to vilify him. Paige did enough of that."

Lia laughed under her breath. After the driveway showdown, family dinner was a shitshow. I cried in my old bedroom while Isabel and Paige and Lia yelled over each other about what happened. Logan kept knocking on the door, trying to talk to me, and Emmett happily sat the table with a strangely quiet Finn.

"I'm not trying to vilify, per se." She nudged back. "I mean, sure, it couldn't be easy to hear that about Finn, but literally, nothing ever happened between you two. Not even a single loaded glance. I think if he'd given his hothead temper five seconds to calm down, he would've thought that through and seen that you were still the badass that rocked his freaking world off its axis up in that cabin, and he'd eventually get over it."

"Here too," I heard myself say.

"What here too?"

I glanced down at my bed with a sheepish grin.

"Oh my gosh," Lia groaned. "Seriously? Don't tell me stuff like that. It's Bauer. I'm still coming around to this whole thing."

That made my heart do the weird achy thing again. I missed him. It had been two days, and I missed him.

"Nothing to come around to." I sighed. "He made it clear I wasn't worth the trouble of dealing with that kind of emotional baggage to him."

"Claire, be serious, you know that man was crazy about you, right? Like ... stupid, head over heels in love with you."

"If he was," I said carefully, "he has a strange way of showing it."

"Bauer has the emotional IQ of a six-year-old, C. You know that."

"No, most six-year-olds could communicate better than he did in that driveway. He has the emotional IQ of a stunted twenty-six-year-old who has no freaking clue how to be in a relationship. Combine that with his stupid face and stupid muscles and stupid job, and that makes him the most dangerous creature alive." I banged my head against the wall. "And stupid me, I thought ..."

"What?"

Bang.

"I thought he'd be willing to figure it out for me. Because of what we had together." I laughed. "And look where that got me. Brokenhearted, being irrationally stubborn to my twin sister who really didn't do anything wrong, and missing him like he sawed off a part of my body and took it with him."

"Graphic but okay, I'm tracking." She glanced at me. "Why are you being so hard on yourself about this?"

Bang.

"I'm the one who's supposed to be studying human behavior, right? Cause and effect. Knowing how childhood trauma can play out into adulthood. It's like I saw Bauer and every single I can fix him impulse was screaming at me. Except the multiple orgasms just made me dumber."

Bang.

"Number one," Lia said. "Stop banging your head against the wall. Concussions help no one. And number two, Adele did a number on him. So freaking what? Brooke did a number on us, and you know why we're not emotionally stunted?"

I turned my head to look at her. "Why?"

"Someone who never gave up on us. A group of someones. We had each other, and we had Logan. Then we had Paige." She