my classes, and I couldn’t think of anything else but Nico. Not what my professors were saying, not which pages they instructed us to read, not even the bar exam.
I’d still been at Tori’s when Nico’s final text came through. My brain seemed to burn even just thinking about it. Some dumb shit like I shouldn’t doubt how much he loved me. I’d wanted to reply right then and there and tell him what a huge fuckwad he was to even text me…but Tori took my phone and said something about how I’d say something I couldn’t take back, how I wasn’t thinking logically, how I was too hurt and angry,
And he’d been right.
Because I wanted to lash out at the man who’d hurt me most of all. So, I wasn’t safe to be around my phone or within typing distance of Nico. Tori had said to give it a few days before I reached out.
I shook my head. I didn’t know if I wanted to reach out—if I would ever want to reach out. I hated him.
Except I didn’t. It all hurt so much because I loved him.
I almost wished Tori hadn’t given my phone back. It made it too easy for me to obsess over Nico’s message and also made it far too obvious when no one at all—mostly Nico—was trying to reach me. It drove me crazy and made me lonely and burned a hole in pocket with its presence all at the same time.
I thought too much about Saint, too, and every one of those thoughts was accompanied by the burning sting of betrayal. He’d let me walk right into a relationship with the office…what? Slut? Casanova? I didn’t even know how to categorize Nico. Apart from ‘bastard.’ He should have told me about his past.
And I didn’t know how to talk to a brother who hadn’t even warned me. Yet again, Saint’s dislike of gossip had left me at a disadvantage. Except this wasn’t gossip—it was information I needed to know to keep my heart safe. And my brother had let me down.
And I couldn’t avoid it, he definitely bore some of the responsibility for the kick in the ego that felt more like a kick in the nuts. So, yeah. I didn’t think about him either.
And I absolutely didn’t think about his dumb rule that would have prevented any of this from happening.
More, I also didn’t think about my pride, and how maybe that was the only thing that had really been wounded.
Everyone had a past, and we were all entitled to privacy, but I couldn’t think of a time I’d ever paraded my past in front of my present.
I grabbed my computer when everyone else started packing their things. I hadn’t even realized the professor had stopped talking.
I had other problems to think about besides my brother, anyway. Like what to do for a job. There was no way I could work at Caldwell & Holton now, even if Saint decided I was the best intern ever created, and I didn’t have a back-up plan.
Well, I did, but it left me in the same position as if I’d never interned in the first place, because I could only submit my grades and recommendation letters from professors to other firms and hope they might take a chance on me.
I left the classroom and trudged to the cafeteria, only half aware of the sun shining down from a clear blue sky. Students lounged on the large, grassy quad, but it was raining in my world.
And I had too much to think about to waste time sitting on the grass. I never should have even interned with Saint. I took the easy way and went to work for my brother, and it had blown up in my face bigtime. I should have just listened to my very first reservations that night at home—when I told him other firms would be lucky to have me work for them. I should have just had more faith in myself and gone it alone rather than trying to stand on Saint’s shoulders.
All the law students in my class knew we had a better chance of being hired where we’d interned, so no matter how much I denied it to myself at the time, I’d kind of expected to walk almost trouble-free into a job. I’d spent years perfecting my ability to please Saint, after all.
I’d taken the easy way and the coward’s way, and maybe this was all I deserved.
Self-pity