Winning my Best Friend's Girl - Piper Rayne Page 0,52
cold beer and a shot of something dark. “You get that until I say more.”
“Jesus, I’m an adult.”
“Then act like one.”
I down the shot and narrow my eyes at him. He’s got to be fucking with me. “What does that mean?”
“It means you and Stella are acting like high school kids. This whole ‘I love her, but she hurt me so I’m gonna date someone else’ crap. I got caught in the middle of it, which sucks, yeah, but you told me you didn’t care if I dated the love of your life. That’s fucked up.”
I shrug.
“Don’t brush it off like it’s nothing. You’re miserable lately, and to tell you the truth, as soon as you and Stella are in a room together, it’s awkward and weird. Why do you think I stopped asking you to come up here?”
“Because you wanted to nail Stella?” My fist clenches around my beer.
“No. Because I can tell that the two of you together is gonna be a fucking buzzkill.”
I sip my beer and nudge my empty shot glass his way. He shakes his head.
“Pretty please with a cherry on top?” I say with an extra dose of sarcasm.
He shakes his head again. “If you don’t want to tell me whatever happened between the two of you, fine. I don’t care because it’s in the past anyway. But almost a decade later, the two of you are still wrapped up in one another whether you want to admit it or not.” He takes a gulp of his own beer.
“She’s just the one. The one who…”
“Got away?”
I shrug. “Ran away.”
He pulls a stool over and straddles it in front of me. “But you never ran after her?”
I shake my head.
“That’s not like you. I feel like you run toward everything that’s scary.” He sips his beer. “Shit, that warehouse fire last year? You were the first one in.”
I shrug again. “It’s different with her.”
“How so?” He pours me another shot, thank God, and I down it before he has the top back on the bottle.
“I’m not sure. She’s like a fire you can’t put out. One that just keeps going, but then again, I think I add fuel to the fire sometimes too.”
“From what I saw, you add gasoline to the fire.”
I nod. He’s right. I’ve been a complete jackass. “Yeah, I guess.”
“But I can tell you one thing, Kingston. If it were me in your shoes just now, the last thing I would’ve done was beat the shit out of her boyfriend because he was kissing someone else. I would’ve been smiling like the cat that ate the canary. Listen, I’ve never loved anyone enough to want their happiness over my own. Hell, I can’t imagine ever feeling that way.” Lou pours another shot and slides it over to me. “I think you need to be honest with yourself.”
“She doesn’t like the fact I’m an adrenaline junkie.”
“Oh, well, I don’t blame her.”
My eyes snap up to meet his. Neither do I. The night of Juno’s wedding when she told me it would kill her if I died, I understood. “I guess I have to change for her.”
He shakes his head. “Yeah, that’s not right either. You could end up resenting her.”
“I wish I could remove it from me like it’s one of the organs you don’t really need, you know?”
“What?” His forehead wrinkles.
“My need to do crazy shit, test my boundaries. You know, get rid of it like it was tonsils or a gallbladder I have no use for. I don’t know why I need it, but the thrill I get when I jump out of a plane and into a fire, or race down a mountain—it’s addicting.”
He blows out a breath. Lou was asked to train as a smoke jumper, but he declined, saying it wasn’t his thing. “Everyone has their reasons to do and not do things. Sometimes those reasons change over time. You’re not there and maybe you never will be. She’ll have to accept that if you two are gonna be together. If she can’t, then I don’t see how it could ever work out between you guys.”
I nod. The truth is crushing and feels like a weight on my chest.
I finish my beer, and for the rest of the night, we sit by the bonfire and shoot the shit. Samantha and Tank don’t leave her room, but Stump joins us after he wakes from his nap. I do my best not to think about Stella, but that’s pretty much