The Dare - Elle Kennedy Page 0,57

get this number?” I ask coldly.

Taylor looks up at me with questioning eyes.

“Don’t be mad, bro. I talked it out of one of your boys at the club in Buffalo.” Bucky, I bet. That kid would give up his bank PIN if you asked nicely. “Bunch of fucking lightweights, those jocks.”

“Well, lose it. I told you before—”

“Easy, brother. I come in peace. Listen, I’m gonna be in Boston this weekend. Let’s meet up, talk it out. It’d be good for both of us.”

Yeah, right. With Kai, there’s only ever what’s good for him.

“Not interested.” I end the call and toss my phone to the floor. Damn it.

“Was it that guy again?” Looking concerned, Taylor unwraps herself from my side and sits up, adjusting her shirt and zipping up her jeans. “Kai?”

“It’s fine. Forget about it.” I say the words to her, but I’m really talking to myself. Ever since Kai reappeared that night after the tournament, I haven’t been able to shake the sense of dread knotting in my stomach.

“Conor. I know you’re holding something back.” When Taylor turns her gaze on me—sincere, vulnerable—I feel like such an asshole. “And if you’re not ready to tell me, or you don’t trust me with the information, that’s fine. But don’t act like it isn’t there.”

Fuck me.

“I’m sorry.” I lick my suddenly dry lips. If Taylor’s going to finally realize she’s too good for my dumb ass, it might as well be sooner rather than later. “I didn’t want to say anything because I like the person you think I am.”

A groove digs into her forehead. “What does that mean?”

It means that if Taylor knew what was good for her, she’d block my number.

“It means if you’d known me back then, you’d have been smart to run the other way.”

“I doubt that’s true,” she says, and it absolutely guts me. This girl has so much misplaced faith in me. “Just tell me. I’m sure it’s worse in my head.”

Fuck it.

“I’ve spent the last couple years trying to get away from Kai because I used to be him,” I admit. “I was in it up to my neck with him since we were kids. Letting him talk me into dumb shit, breaking into abandoned buildings, tagging, some shoplifting.” Fighting, smashing out car windows. “By high school Kai started getting into dealing. Just pot, mostly. It’s what people did, you know? Like, it didn’t feel wrong at the time. Sometime during sophomore year of high school, though, his older brother got locked up for chopping cars, and after Tommy went away, it seemed like Kai started speeding down the same path. Hanging out with some of his brother’s friends, missing weeks of school.”

I can’t read Taylor’s expression as I tell her all of this. And I’m still unable to bring myself to admit the worst of it, because I’m ashamed, embarrassed of what I was. Knowing it’s all still in me, under the surface. The stain that’s soaked through the carpet.

“Then my mom married Max and we moved out of the neighborhood. They sent me to a private school.” I shrug. “That got me away from Kai, for the most part. If it weren’t for that, I probably would’ve been locked up by now. Gotten into the same shit Kai started in on.”

Taylor stares at me for a long time. Silent, pensive. I don’t know I’m holding my breath until she releases hers.

“That’s it?”

No.

“Yes,” I say out loud. “I mean, yeah, basically.”

Christ, I’m an asshole. A coward.

“Everyone comes from somewhere, Conor. We’ve all screwed up, made mistakes.” Her tone is soft, but ringing with conviction. “I don’t care who you were before. Only who you choose to be now.”

I chuckle darkly. “That’s easy for you to say, though. You’re from Cambridge.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“You can’t understand what it’s like to be dirt poor one day and dropped off at a private school in loafers and a tie the next. I hated all those pretentious fucks driving goddamn Beamers and carrying Louis Vuitton backpacks. Every day I’d get dirty looks, hassled in the halls, and I’d be thinking to myself, man, it’d be so easy to jack their car and go joyriding, or loot all their rich kid toys they just left sitting in their gym lockers. It’s why I went to a state college in California, because I was tired of not belonging.” I shake my head wryly. “Then I end up here with all these East Coast old money