Heartbreaker - Julie Kriss Page 0,18

need to make fun of it. I like them, and they make me happy. The men are hot and perfect, the women are awesome, there’s tons of mind-blowing sex, and everything works out in the end. They’re my antidote to the crappy real world.”

I felt myself frowning at her. It wasn’t the idea of her reading romance novels—that didn’t matter to me. It was the phrase The men are hot and perfect. That, and There’s tons of mind-blowing sex. Mina had to read books to experience mind-blowing sex?

“What?” Mina said, looking at my expression. “What’s the problem?”

What about real life? I was happy that Mina enjoyed some hot entertainment, but she deserved all of that great stuff in real life as well. True, men in real life weren’t perfect—I certainly wasn’t—but it didn’t mean she couldn’t have some kind of fairy tale.

I got the feeling that Mina read those books because she didn’t believe in the fairy tale in real life. And that was something I had contributed to, wasn’t it? I had taught her the first lesson in being hurt by a guy, in not expecting any guy to be perfect, or even to hit the basic low bar of decency. On prom night, I’d taught her that pretty well.

And I didn’t like that. Not at all.

“What is it, Holden?” Mina asked me again. “You’re freaking me out.”

“Here’s the deal,” I said. “When I get my watch back, you get the rest of the story.”

She frowned. “What?”

“I’m not telling you the whole story tonight. I said I would, but I’ve changed my mind. You have to see me again, and when you do, I’ll tell you some more of it. If you don’t want to give me my watch, then I don’t want to give you my story. At least, not all of it.” I smiled. “Sorry, Mina. If you want to know the end of the story, you’re just going to have to wait.”

Nine

Mina

I could have Googled it. I knew that. I could have Googled Holden, his brother, his family. I could have creeped his Facebook—if he was even on Facebook—or whatever other social media he had. I could have asked my parents or my Facebook friends from high school what they knew about Holden Whittaker. If I dug hard enough, I could find out a lot about him.

But the truth was, I could have done all of that any time in the last ten years, not just in the time since I saw Holden again. I could have made it my goal to find the truth about why I was stood up, but I hadn’t. I chose not to. It was an old wound that still hurt, and I hadn’t wanted to rip it open again. I’d just wanted to forget it and move on.

“I’m dying to know,” Tess said to me as we rode the train into Manhattan that Saturday morning. “I mean, come on. I’m going to stalk him myself and find the answers.”

I leaned into the curve as the train screeched down the tracks. “You can do that if you want, but don’t tell me what you find. I’ve decided I’m going to let him tell me.”

“But why?” she asked, shifting her bag higher on her shoulder. “That way, you have to wait, like, however long until he has time to see you again.”

“Because I want to hear it from him,” I said. “That seems right, somehow. And the way he told the story, even just the beginning…” I bit my lip. “I have the feeling it’s something kind of serious. It isn’t just I changed my mind, sorry, or I guess I wasn’t that into you. I think something happened. I just don’t know what. And I think it’s important I hear it from him.”

Tess looked at me, her hand gripping the rail. She was wearing her usual uniform—jeans, a tee, Skechers, her hair in a ponytail. I’d met her sister and her sister’s husband, my neighbors, and I’d gotten permission to take Tess for an outing today. The sister and brother-in-law were nice people, but both of them were workaholics and they looked exhaustedly relieved to have me take Tess off their hands for a day. I wanted Tess to spend time with someone who really wanted to be with her. That someone was me.

“Okay, I get it, I think,” Tess said. “Besides, I think you like him.”

I blew out a breath. Like was a complicated word when it came to Holden