Anyone But Nick (Anyone But... #3) - Penelope Bloom Page 0,49

crooked.

I could’ve laughed if I were seeing this under any other circumstance. Instead, I sighed and scooped her up. “Where’s your key?” I asked when we got to the door.

“Probably in my purse. Right next to the dildos,” she added with a snort. “Just kidding. My dildos are way too big to fit in there.”

I couldn’t help grinning a little. I set her down and propped her against the wall as I looked in her purse. I frowned when I saw a familiar piece of paper folded into a small square. When I pulled it out, I knew exactly what it was.

“Why did you take this?” I asked. My heart was in my throat at the thought of her reading it. Things with Kira had never worked out, but it didn’t mean I wanted to embarrass her. I also didn’t want to have to explain why I’d kept the thing for so long. “Was this why you really snuck into my office? To snoop and steal my shit?”

She raised her eyebrows, then squinted, like she could barely see what I was holding a few inches in front of her face. “Oh. No. I took that because I was the one who wrote the damn thing in the first place. Your dumb ass got it wet. Then you thought some smears of ink were a signature. It was supposed to be an anonymous letter, Nick.” She said my name in a comically deep voice, then shook her head and rolled her eyes. “Anonymous, but obvious.”

My knees felt weak, so I crouched down beside her and tried to wrap my head around what she’d just said. The ira I’d assumed to be Kira’s name, minus the K for reasons I could never puzzle out, had been from Miranda. Shit.

One of the most satisfying things about overcoming a complex challenge in just the right way had always been the sensation of things falling into place. It was like a domino effect. Once the right action was taken, it trickled down, sometimes in unexpected but gratifying ways. This was similar, but deeply unsettling.

It was a puzzle I’d had wrong my whole life, and now I knew it was because it had all been based on one single faulty piece of information. The poem hadn’t been from Kira. I could still see the shock on Kira’s face when I’d asked her out a few days after I got the note in my locker. It explained why Miranda had acted so utterly betrayed. She’d been waiting for me to tell her what I thought of the poem—the damn poem that was so obviously from her if it hadn’t been for the name I’d thought had been given at the bottom.

Anonymous, but obvious. She was right. It would’ve been, and what would’ve happened if I’d asked her out instead of Kira back then? Would Miranda and her friends have even made their stupid oath in the first place? God only knew, but one thing was certain. Nothing I’d thought I knew made sense anymore. All the decisions I was making had been based on a flawed foundation of understanding, and I’d need to take the time to sort through all this.

“I can’t find the key,” I said a few minutes later when I had dug through her purse thoroughly enough to be sure. “I also didn’t see any dildos.”

“That’s fine. We can share your bed. And I’ve always preferred the real thing, anyway.”

I picked her up again, carried her to my room, and laid her on my bed. I had zero intention of getting in that bed with her, so all I did was slip off her shoes and pull the comforter up over her. I thought she had fallen asleep, and I was just admiring how heartbreakingly beautiful she was when she made a soft moaning sound, then smiled.

“One stupid poem cost us seven years.” She muttered the words so softly I wondered if I had imagined them.

I leaned closer, straining my ears—waiting for more. The only answer she gave was a delicate little burp before she rolled over and seemed to fall asleep.

I made myself comfortable in the chair on the other side of the room and tried to sleep, but with everything running through my mind, I was almost certain I wasn’t going to find any rest. Nothing was going to be the same between us after tonight. Miranda might care about her career, and it might be the cornerstone of her identity, but