a glare. “Do you know how many times V sat in front of you in school and listened as your friends talked about her?”
“I never said anything.”
“You’re right. You didn’t add anything, but you didn’t stop it, either. You laughed along. Just because you decide to not have a voice doesn’t make you innocent. She was in front of you all those years and she was invisible to you. At least her feelings were. You and your stupid friends assumed because V sees life differently and lives in her own way that she didn’t feel. But she was there and she does feel and your words tore her down. I know you two got something going on now, which means she’s forgiven you, but I haven’t. She’s got too big of a heart, and I’ll be damned if you tear it apart.”
My chest aches. I never start gossip—that’s not who I am. But I don’t finish it, either. I go with the flow with my friends, listening and then following along. Just like Knox said—the person who blends in, who has no voice other than to make people happy. Only adding a comment here or there to enter the conversation. Guilt thickens my throat. Alphabetical order. Isn’t that what Veronica said when we started working together?
Screw me, she’s always been right there. “I didn’t mean anything.”
“Most people never do, but that doesn’t make it right,” he continues. “Jesse thinks you’re a rebound. I think she’s lonely. Either way, you’ll end up hurting her, even if you don’t mean to, and she doesn’t have time for that.”
“If you don’t like me, why’d you let me in?”
“I didn’t let you in to help you,” he says. “This nonsense has already gotten out of hand with the two of you. You know more than you should, and she said you two are casual. Maybe you were. Maybe that’s how it started out, but you’re on the verge of hurting her. When she feels better you need to break this off before you hurt her in ways you can’t take back.”
“I’m not ending anything.”
Kravitz steps into my space and looks at me with vacant eyes. “You think you’re strong enough to be with her?”
“I am.”
“You’re not. Loving V requires sacrifice. It means you don’t get to be selfish, and you don’t get to call the shots.” He shoves a finger into my chest and emotion shakes his voice. “It means having your heart ripped out again and again, but you stay by her side, supporting her, because she’s one of the best damn people you will ever meet. You don’t have that in you. Not the boy who doesn’t have the guts to stop his friends from talking crap about a girl he says he cares about. Because that’s what’s happening at school. Since she’s been with you, the rumors are getting worse, and she hears each and every single word. She doesn’t have time for that crap, and she deserves a hell of a lot better.”
The raw pain rolling off him cracks something in my chest. The type of pain I’ve only seen a few times from people in my life at funerals. Something I only felt once and that was when my mother and father told me to choose between them. I see grief.
She won’t walk in without permission.
Death.
Ghosts are in the house.
Her mom.
She wants to believe.
It’s real.
The world tunnels in then tunnels out.
“The tumor’s worse than what she’s let on.”
He doesn’t deny it, just stares at me like he’s a horseman of the apocalypse and I’m on his list. I move to go around him, he slides with me. My hands come up, I push him back, his arms come up and when I’m ready to block and throw a blow a voice comes from behind me.
“Let him through.” Jesse Lachlin. An unlikely ally enters the apartment. “She’d want to see him.”
“He’s bad news.” Kravitz fumes.
“Yeah, but that’s not our choice. It’s never been our choice.”
With a final glare at Kravitz, I let my shoulder hit his as I sprint across the room and up the stairs. I glance right and see what must be her father’s bedroom, then left. Veronica’s laid out on the bed, a crocheted blanket over her sleeping form. A soft light on her dresser keeps her from being eaten alive by the shadows stalking the room.
I enter and a sweet herbal scent hits my nose. Pot. On the bedside table is a smashed-out joint on a