“Oh, my God,” I whisper, so low I’m not even sure he can hear me.
“Give me a chance,” he pleads, his eyes finding me again, and this time, he takes two massive strides toward me, until he’s so close I could reach out my hand and touch him without any effort if I really wanted to. “Don’t throw away what we had. Because I can see it on your face when you’re with me that you still feel it, too.”
I close my eyes when he says that, freeing two tears that I didn’t realize I’d been holding at bay with my eyes wide with shock. I let out a shaky breath, swallow down the emotion, and open my eyes again.
“How can you do this?” I ask, my voice barely a whisper. I shake my head, over and over, anger and confusion settling in in equal measure. “How can you show up here and say this after all this time? After everything that… and we didn’t talk for so long… and then Kade…”
“I know it’s inconvenient,” Jarrett says, but he stands just as tall, staring down at me over the bridge of his nose. “I know my timing is shit. But I can’t go back and undo what I did. I can’t go back and make a different choice. All I have is right here, and right now, and I may not know much, but I know that I refuse to let you go without a fight.”
I think I scoff, or maybe I gasp, or maybe I just let out a whimper of a breath with my jaw still hanging down on the ground.
“Don’t answer me now. Think about it,” he says, and then he backs away, giving me space to breathe again. “I’m not going anywhere. Not until you tell me all hope is gone.”
“And if I do?”
He takes a long, slow breath, letting it out through his nose before he says, “Then, I’ll wish you and my brother well, and I’ll leave you alone. For good.” He swallows. “Forever.”
Those words spark more tears in my eyes, but I don’t know what to say back. And after a moment’s pause, Jarrett crosses the space between us, slides his hands to frame my face and tilts my head until his lips brush my hairline.
“Please,” he pleads with the kiss. “Come back to me.”
I can feel the tension in his arms, the bend of his brows even though I can’t see them as he presses one final kiss and releases me like it kills him to do so. He turns and leaves me like that, not even looking back once, and in less than ten seconds, he’s on the elevator again and out of sight.
I stumble back, hand flying up to press against the still-warm spot where his lips were.
Erin comes out of her room to refill her water, frowning at the sight of me. “Who was that?”
“Jarrett,” I whisper.
“Jarrett?!” She shakes her head, leaning a hip against the kitchen island. “What did he want?”
When I look at her, I can’t fight back the tears that gloss over my eyes, no matter how hard I try to. “Me.” I shake my head. “He wants me.”
Erin’s face goes slack. “Oh, shit.”
“Yeah,” I say on a mix of a laugh and a scoff, and I look back down the hall to where he disappeared. “Oh, shit is right.”
THE OMEGA CHI FORMAL always symbolized the end of an era to me.
It was the end of one semester and the beginning of the next, a send-off to spring and a welcome to summer, a turning of the tides to new leadership and new opportunity.
But that’s because, in the past, I always had more yet to come.
I always had a next semester, a next year, a summer break, and then a welcome back to campus.
But this time?
It’s the end.
The semester has zoomed by so fast I feel dizzy from it. And now, climbing onto the bus after partying all night with my brothers at our formal, it’s really starting to hit me.
This is it.
I took my last tests this week, and my family is flying in for graduation in just a few days.
This was my last fraternity event.
Tomorrow, I’ll start packing up my room at the house, only this time, I won’t be coming back.
There’s no more time to think about what comes next, because the future is here. It’s been knocking on my door for months, and now that I’m looking it in the face, I can’t push it off any longer.
What are you going to do, it’s asking me.
And I have no choice but to answer.
Along with the flurry of events that mark the end of a semester, my mind has also been a tornado ever since Erin flew out of my room like it was on fire.
Ever since I kissed her.
Even still, I’m torn about how I feel regarding that day. Part of me is so angry, I could punch my own damn self in the balls. After all this time being patient and waiting for the right opportunity, being there for her while remembering she belonged to someone else, focusing on our friendship and trying to ignore my true feelings for her, and then I go and blow it, making my move on the day she’s literally crying on my shoulder over another dude.
But the other part of me isn’t sorry at all.
This feeling between us has been building for months. No, years. It’s always been there, humming under the surface like a volcano waiting to erupt.
And I couldn’t fight it anymore.
In that moment, with Erin sitting on my bed, her eyes puffy and red and tears staining her cheeks, all I wanted was to comfort her and show her how special she is, how much she means to me.
And I did just that.
The way she leaned into the kiss, too, tells me that she feels the same way I do.
But the way she ran away tells me I don’t know shit.
She was supposed to be here tonight, at my last formal, at my last Omega Chi event ever. I invited her to come with me the day after my family left from family weekend, and she told me she’d be honored. She promised me she’d be here.
Of course, that was before the kiss.
I wonder if that’s how I’ll refer to my life now, before the kiss and after the kiss, BK and AK. Because in my gut, I know nothing will ever be the same again.
There’s no going back.
That’s why when the bus dumps me and the rest of my brothers off at the Omega Chi house, instead of joining all of them inside for the afterparty, I slip around back to my truck and fire up the engine.
It’s time to shoot my final shot.
I speed across town with nothing but my thoughts to keep me company. I don’t even bother turning on the radio. Instead, I play through every word in my head, everything I’ll say to try to get her to open her eyes.
When I make it to her building downtown, the guy behind the desk in the lobby calls Jess to buzz me up. But the dude frowns after a moment, murmuring a yes, miss before handing me the phone.
“Bear? What are you doing here?”
I clear my throat. “I, um, I was looking for Erin. Is she around?”
“She’s studying at the Grove library, got a big exam tomorrow morning.” She pauses. “Is everything okay?”
“Uh, yeah, I just…” I grab the back of my neck, wondering how much I should lie here since no one really knows anything about me and Erin other than that we’re casual friends. “She left her sweater at the restaurant when we were with my family, so I was just bringing it back.”
“At midnight on a Saturday?” Jess challenges.
Shit.
After a moment, she sighs. “Look… I know what happened between you two.”
I blanch. “You do?”
“She told me a while back… about how she was pregnant… and… well…”
Oh.
That.
“I just need to talk to her,” I say.
Jess is quiet for a moment before she sighs again. “You know where the Grove campus is, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Park by the Philips Building and follow the winding path through the park. The library is about a quarter mile into the center of campus, it’s the big white building with the gold windows. I think she usually studies on the third floor with her study group, in one of the corner rooms.”
“Thanks, Jess.”
I freeze, eyeing the guy behind the desk, who’s impatiently waiting for me to give the phone back and get out of his lobby.
“Afraid so,” I murmur.
Jess makes a noise that sounds like she laughed and clapped at the same time. “I fucking knew it.”
“Doesn’t mean she feels the same.”
“Doesn’t mean she doesn’t, either. Give her hell, tiger.”
I hand the phone back to the guy behind the desk, and then I’m back in my truck and headed across town to the Grove campus.
Jess’s instructions are right on the money, and I find my way to the library easy enough. There’s a student at the front desk scanning ID cards to let people in, but it’s so late that she’s got her nose buried in a book, so I open the door as quietly as I can and sneak through, ducking around the first corner before she spies me.
I have no idea where I’m going. I don’t even know where the elevators or stairs are. But eventually, I find my way, and make it to the third floor. In the middle, there are long, wooden tables spanning the room that’s not covered in bookshelves, and students pepper every other chair, laptops and textbooks open and headphones over their ears. Along the edges of the room are a dozen study group rooms.
I start with the first one.
It only takes me six times of bursting through the door and apologizing to confused groups of students before I find the one Erin is in.
Her eyes go wide when she sees me, and the rest of her group is already yelling at me that they have the room reserved for the night. I ignore them all, standing in the doorway with my heart beating so fast and hard it’s all I hear in my ears.
My hands are cold and curled at my sides.
Every breath feels like my last.
And all I can focus on is Erin Xanders and the way I burn for her, a truth I can no longer hide.
“Bear?” she asks, looking around the table apologetically before she stands and folds her arms over her chest. “What are you doing here? The library is for students on—”
“I’m graduating, Erin.”
She tucks her hair behind her ear, cheeks pink with embarrassment. “I’m well aware of that. And I know I was supposed to go to formal with you tonight, but—”
“But you didn’t,” I finish for her. “Because I kissed you earlier this week, and I scared you. I scared myself, too.”
Her study group is suddenly very interested, every single one of them looking between me and Erin with intrigue.
“Bear, this isn’t the place.”
“Where is, hmm? Because isn’t this the way it always is with us? It’s not the right time. It’s not the right place. There’s someone else in the picture. There’s always something standing between us.” I shake my head. “I’m done with making excuses. This is it for me, Erin. I’m out of time.”
Erin swallows, crossing her arms tighter, but she doesn’t tell me to leave again.
I take it as my sign to say whatever I have to say.
With a deep breath, I step more into the room, ignoring the small group of students who have stopped studying in the main room to listen, too.
“Look, I know what happened between us the other day was crazy and unexpected. You came to me when you were hurting over Gavin, and I should have just listened and comforted you. It was what I intended to do. But sometimes, our hearts take over. Sometimes we do shit we don’t understand. And in that moment, with you there crying over a guy who didn’t deserve even a moment of your time, I was done waiting.” I swallow. “I was done pretending that I don’t love you, that I haven’t loved you for years, and not as a friend, Erin.”
Her nose flares, and she rolls her lips together against the tears building in her eyes.
Keep going.
Don’t let up now.
“I get that it isn’t perfect timing, but at the same time, you’re either blind or in denial if you say there’s nothing between us, that there hasn’t always been something between us. And I think a part of you knows as well as I do that there always will be.”
Erin sniffs, and now, we’ve gained the attention of practically the entire library.
I take another step toward her, my chest heaving as I do. “Erin, I graduate one week from today. And then I have to decide — do I leave? Go to Pittsburgh and start a career? Or do I stay?” I pause. “And if I’m being honest, you are the only thing tying me to this place.”
I think a girl in the room says awww before someone shushes her.
“So, this is it. This is me coming to you with everything that I am, everything that I feel, no holds barred.” I step right up to her, then, my eyes flicking between hers, begging her to see that I mean every word. “I love you, Erin Xanders. So, if there’s even a tiny part of you who still wants me here, you have to tell me now. You have to.” I swallow with how urgent and consuming those words feel in my throat. “Don’t let me go if there’s even an ounce of you that feels the same way I do.”
Erin’s face crumples, her brows bending together fiercely, tears bubbling in her eyes as she watches me, her chest heaving just the same as mine.
It feels like the longest day of my life happens in the span of the next several seconds, waiting for her response, seeing it in her eyes that whatever it is, it’s killing her.
And finally, she says two words that ring out louder and clearer than anything I’ve said.
“I can’t.”
Her lips tremble with the confession, and I let out a long breath, taking a step back from her like I don’t know her at all.
“I can’t give you anything right now,” she says, shaking her head. “I have nothing to give. What little I did have just got obliterated and now I…” She looks away from me, squeezing her eyes shut and freeing the tears that had been building. When she opens her eyes again and looks at me, she doesn’t say another word.
I lick my lips, nodding, letting the meaning of what she’s said settle in. “It’s okay,” I whisper, even though it’s everything but okay. “I understand.”
Everything inside me longs to reach for her, to have one last hug, one last kiss, one last moment of pretending like she’ll ever be mine. But I know it will hurt more than it will help.
This is it.
I put my heart out there, I told her everything.
She doesn’t feel the same.
The only thing left to do now is to go, so with another nod in her direction, I turn, ignoring the heavy silence of everyone watching us. The group that had gathered at the doorway clears quickly, making way for me to pass through with sympathetic looks reflected in their eyes.
When I push past the doorframe, Erin calls out behind me.
“Bear, wait!”
I pause, slapping the doorframe with one hand and waiting, just like she asked, but I can’t turn around to face her again.
“I have nothing left to give,” she repeats, her voice strangled. There’s a long pause, so long I almost start walking again, but then she speaks again. “But whatever I do have, whatever is left of me… it’s yours.”
A flurry of gasps echoes in my ears as my head snaps back around, and Erin is standing there with her arms at her side, tears flooding her eyes and slipping down her cheeks. She smiles, and shrugs, and then her bottom lip wobbles again as she stands there and waits for my next move.
I shove off the doorframe and race across the room to her, and in a split second that feels like coming home, I sweep her into my arms and capture her next sob with my mouth on hers.
The library erupts in a thunderous roar of applause and cheers so loud I’m sure we’ll all get kicked out, but I couldn’t care less in this moment. Right now, all that matters is that Erin is in my arms, and she feels the same, and finally, after all these years, she’s mine.
I finally break her kiss as she laughs and looks around the room embarrassed, burying her face in my chest.
“I know you think what’s left of you isn’t much,” I whisper f
or only her to hear. “But I think it’s the very best of you.”
She shakes her head, looking up at me with glossy eyes. “I’m a mess, Bear. It’s never going to be easy for us. I’m always going to be difficult. It’s in my nature.”
I smile, sweeping her hair back over her shoulder. “Good thing I don’t like anything that’s easy, then, huh?”
I’m not sure if she cries or laughs, but her lips spread into a smile the longer she watches me. “You’re right. I have always felt this,” she says, pressing her hands to my chest. “I just didn’t know what to do about it.”
“We’ll figure it out together.”
“This is really happening, isn’t it?”
I smile, leaning down to press another kiss to her lips. “You bet your ass it is.”
Then, I bend down and swing her over my shoulder caveman style, earning us another cheer from the crowd as I gather her stuff off the table and toss it haphazardly in her bag. Once I’ve got her and her belongings loaded up, I steer us toward the exit.
“Bear! Put me down! I need to study!”
“You can study when I’m done kissing you,” I tell her, and then with a wink at the group as I pass through the doorway, I add, “Which probably won’t be until the morning, so hopefully you’re ready for that test of yours by now.”
Everyone laughs and sends us off with a final set of cheers.
And then I carry that stubborn, impossibly frustrating, absolutely perfect girl into the next era.
I have a feeling it will be the best one yet.
“YOU LOOKED SO HOT walking across that stage,” Cassie says, drawing circles on my chest as we lie in my bed.
Or should I say on my bed, since it’s just a mattress on a bed frame now that I’ve packed up my whole room.
“Oh, yeah? That oversized, shiny, black gown really does it for you, huh?”
“Mmm, I think it was more the funny hat on your head. And when you switched that tassel over to the other side?” She groans. “So sexy.”
I chuckle, absentmindedly playing with the strands of her hair with one hand, the other propped under my head, both of us looking up at the ceiling.
“I’ve spent a lot of days and nights staring at this ceiling,” I say on a sigh. Then, I pinch Cassie’s side. “Most of them driving myself crazy over you.”
Hazed: A New Adult College Romance (Palm South University Book 6) Page 23
