answer. And a heads-up would have been nice. It’s like Ezra wants to stab at me as much as he can, using every weapon at his disposal.
I still in place without anything I can tell him except the truth. If I didn’t have more than enough reasons to be mad at Ezra, I certainly have one now.
“I was trying to protect you both.”
“From?”
Damon steps in my direction, but stops himself several feet away.
“What would you need to protect us from?”
Each other, I don’t say.
Instead, I try to pass it off as something in the past, something easily explained as youth and inexperience.
“I didn’t know what to do back then. You wanted me, and so did he. I was afraid you two would fight. And because you were leaving together, I thought it would be better if I just walked away without causing a problem.”
“So you ditched us both?”
I nod.
“Okay, then tell me who you want now, because it’s obvious we’re right back in the same place. The only difference is I now know you promised Ezra something you never said to me. You never answered me back then, Red. And I think I know why. But why don’t you tell me?”
Damon already knows the answer, so I don’t bother explaining it. The truth is written all over his face.
All I want to do is reach out and smooth the pain from his expression, but I know better than to touch him right now. Anything I do would only hurt him more.
I have to hand it to him. Damon took no time at all cornering me on that one.
Sadly, though, what neither of them understand is that it has to end the same way.
No matter who I choose, the other will be pushed out.
No matter what I do, I’ve come between them.
And I refuse to do that.
I refuse to be that girl.
He steps forward. “Tell me who you want.”
“Neither of you,” I admit. “My plan was to get through whatever this six weeks is and then leave it that we’re all just friends.”
His brows crash together, the corner of his lip tugging up.
“But you’re not walking away entirely again?”
What sucks is I still have to lie to him.
In a perfect world and in the best of circumstances I could tell Damon the truth about how I feel. But with his dad calling him and everything else, the truth of my feelings has to stay concealed.
Another couple weeks and this would have been a different story, but as it stands now, I have no choice.
“I can be friends with you two. I mean, that’s all this is, right?”
He laughs, but it’s anger rolling off that sound, that and disbelief.
“I find that hard to believe considering you promised Ezra you’d stay with him and leave me after high school. If you ask me, that means you’re lying to me now about what you actually want.”
“That was ten years ago,” I say, crossing my arms over my chest because I need to hide in some way from the energy that surrounds this man. “Things change.”
Running a hand through his hair, Damon shifts his weight, the anger dissipating into sorrow.
“Do they? Because they haven’t changed with me. And judging by the way Ezra has been acting, it hasn’t changed with him either. So tell me, Red, do things change?”
Pausing to let me answer what I was hoping was a rhetorical question, Damon shakes his head and paces away from me, his voice barely controlled when he speaks again.
“Tell me, Red. Do they change? I actually wanted an answer to that.”
No.
Not at all, in fact.
Not in my life, at least.
Think about it. Really look at what it is. In my senior year of high school, I was promised to Mason, my life planned out for me, my marriage already arranged. I wasn’t being sent to college. I was allowed to travel the world, but only to make myself a better hostess for foreign business contacts.
I had my entire life laid out for me.
And now?
Everything is the same.
I had one week of believing it could be different. One week until Damon admitted how he felt and I had to let the fantasy of Ezra go.
One fucking week.
That’s all I was allowed of a normal life.
Unfortunately, the only answer I have is exactly what he doesn’t want to hear. Which leaves me in a place where I’m lying again.
“They do. Plus, I’m not sure that any of it really matters. In a few years, I’ll be married to