Broken

by Lauren Layne

  I swallow. “Michael.”

  He smiles. “Liv.”

  Kill me. Kill me kill me kill me. This is not happening. The very guy I’m trying to escape is standing in the house that’s supposed to be my hiding place.

  I tell my manners to override my panic but fail miserably. “What are you doing here?”

  For the first time, the heated adoration on his face flickers. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, how did you even find me? Did my parents give you the address?”

  Michael frowns and takes a step toward me. I step back.

  “What are you talking about?” he asks. “You told me to come.”

  I blink. “I’m sorry, what?”

  “Your texts, Liv. You told me you needed to see me. Said you couldn’t get away, and asked if I could come here—” He breaks off when he sees the truth on my face. “You didn’t ask me to come.”

  But I’m barely listening, because a dangerous buzzing has taken over my brain. Very slowly I turn my head to face him.

  Only then does Paul emerge from the shadows. “Surprise, darling.” His voice is lethal.

  I meet his gaze, and cruel triumph is written all over his features.

  The pieces click together as I read his face. I get it now. I get what’s going on. This is some sick revenge plot. I snooped in his business, behind his back—I dragged his ghosts out of the closet without permission.

  Now it’s his turn.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Paul

  It was ridiculously easy—just a couple of quick texts to the mysterious Michael when Olivia was out for her morning run.

  Runs that I once joined her on. Right up until she went and acted just like the rest of them, reading up on me like I was Soldier X instead of Paul.

  But that’s not the point. The point is that my instincts about Michael were dead-on: not just a friend, but not a boyfriend either, though he wanted to be. It was written all over his whipped face when she came down the stairs.

  It’s not Michael’s face I’m looking at now, though. It’s Olivia’s. I was prepared for surprise and anger. No, I was counting on them. It’s the very nature of revenge, after all. But what I see on her perfect features is pure, undiluted agony.

  I am an ass. But then, I’ve always known I’m an ass. It’s time she knows it too. And I’m a big fan of the eye-for-an-eye philosophy. She snoops in my business, I snoop in hers. Did I go overboard? Sure. But it was so fucking easy.

  I’d assumed that Olivia’s reasons for fleeing New York were a little more interesting than a clichéd love triangle, but when Michael thought it was Olivia asking him to come see her, he responded in about two seconds. He had it bad, and Olivia was avoiding him.

  The need to fuck with her life the way she’d fucked with mine was too great to resist, and now…now I regret it. The tension in the foyer is almost palpable, and my plan no longer feels cleverly devious. It feels cruel.

  “Olivia.” Michael moves toward her, hand outstretched, and she makes a little sound of dismay.

  Instinctively, I start to move between them, but Olivia practically hisses at me.

  “Get out,” she snaps at me. “You owe me that much.”

  The magnitude of my manipulation is starting to sink in, and I feel like complete shit. Still, I give Michael a warning glance, as though to tell him not to hurt her. But I’m wasting the effort. He only has eyes for her.

  I walk toward the door, pausing beside her. I open my mouth to…to do what? Apologize? But she doesn’t give me the chance.

  “Leave.” She doesn’t even look at me.

  I force myself to walk out the door. For one heart-stopping moment, I don’t know how to live with myself.

  But then I remember: I’m half dead anyway.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Olivia

  Paul leaves without so much as a backward glance, probably gloating that his revenge is going so perfectly according to plan.

  I should be relieved to have the hateful guy out of my sight so I can gather my thoughts, but the truth is, Paul is just one part of this nightmare. A big part, to be sure. And he’s the catalyst. The fact that he would go through the effort of texting Michael with the sole intention of revenge makes me realize there’s a whole level of bastard in him that I didn’t know existed.

  Having a moment of space from him should give me time to catch my breath. But I can’t seem to breathe.

  Gathering my courage, I lift my chin and look at my former best friend. It’s only the second time Michael and I have been alone together since that horrible day when Ethan walked into Michael’s bedroom and saw me making out with his best friend.

  Yeah. Forget pinning a scarlet A on my shirt. I deserve a tattoo. On my face.

  Paul has no idea just how much he went for the jugular by forcing me to face Michael again.

  But still…Michael came. He came all the way from New York to Maine for me, when I’ve been ignoring his texts for weeks. I have to know why, even though I think I already know.

  “Why’d you come?” I ask. “I mean, I get that you thought it was me asking, but even then…it’s a lot of effort.”

  His gaze is hot. Longing. “Because I care about you. And I need you to know how much.”

  My heart rips. “Don’t. Don’t do this.”

  “It’s been a long time coming, Liv,” Michael grinds out. “You never let me explain.” I see pain flash in his familiar brown eyes.

  It’s the same pain I felt when Ethan removed himself from my life without so much as a backward glance. Michael and I fucked up. I mean, we really, really fucked up, and there’s absolutely no excuse for it. But Ethan never gave us the chance to explain. We can’t make it right, ever, but we didn’t even have the chance to tell someone we loved that we were sorry.

  I finally got that chance at the end of the summer, only because I crashed Ethan’s parents’ beach party in the Hamptons. Now I realize I need that closure with Michael too. Just as he needs it with me.

  “After everything that happened, I can’t let you think that you were just part of some pissing match between me and Ethan.” He moves toward me again, and this time I let him take my hands.

  “Ethan was your best friend. Your best friend.”

  Michael’s chin dips a little. “I know. It was a dick move.”

  I snort. “What we did is so far beyond a dick move, I don’t even know that there are words for it.”

  The room falls silent.

  “I know,” Michael says finally.

  “Then why? I mean, I know I’m not blameless, but you initiated. I’m not mad, I just…why, Michael?”

  And even though I ask, even though I know he needs to say it and I need to hear it so I can help us both move on, I don’t want him to say it. Don’t say it, I silently beg him. Please don’t.

  But Michael doesn’t register my silent plea. As good a friend as he was over the years, as close as we were, he never could read me. Not like that.

  “Because I loved you,” Michael says, the simplicity of the statement almost breaking me. “I still love you.”

  I close my eyes. “For how long? When did it start?”

  Michael shrugs. “Always.”

  Jesus.

  His hands tighten on mine. “Liv. I have to know. Do you…can you…do you love me, Liv? Do you love me?”

  Oh God.

  I want to lie. I want to spare my best friend the searing hurt that the truth will unleash. But I can’t. I owe it to him—and to myself too—to be honest.

  “No,” I say softly. “I didn’t. I don’t. Not like that.”

  And then I wait for him to ask me. I wait for him to ask me why, if I didn’t return his feelings, I let him kiss me. Why I kissed him back.

  I brace myself, but the question never comes. Maybe he can’t bear to hear it. And oddly enough, although I should be relieved at having gotten a reprieve, I almost wish he would demand answers. Because I’m finally ready to give them.
>
  Michael’s eyes turn on me, and though the hurt is still there, anger mingles there too. I belatedly realize that there’s something different about Michael. It’s like he’s changing in front of my eyes. But no, that’s not quite right either…he was different from the moment I saw him today. If Ethan was always the easygoing charmer, Michael was like his edgier half—still charming, but his wit had a more acerbic edge to it. Not unlike Paul, come to think about it.

  But now? There’s a darkness settling into his features. The edges are sharper; the cynicism that he always used as humor now seems more deep-rooted and mean.

  I did that, I realize. All this time, I’ve been so busy trying to cope with the pain I caused Ethan that it never even occurred to me that I did some serious damage to Michael too. I had two best friends in the world, and I managed to treat both of them like garbage: Ethan by betraying him, Michael by walking away.

  His jaw shifts slightly from left to right and back again, the way he does when he’s trying to control his rather formidable temper. He lets go of my hands, jerks back, and gives a self-depreciating laugh. “To think of the way I rushed up here like some knight in shining armor, thinking you wanted me. Needed me.”

  I step toward him. Don’t do this. I’m not worth it.

  “I didn’t know you were coming,” I say hurriedly. “And yet…maybe I’m glad. Maybe this can be closure.”

  I reach out a hand to him again, my heart hurting, but he backs up again.

  “I thought you needed time, Liv.” Michael’s voice is rough. “I’ve held back, thinking you needed to forgive yourself, and me, for what we did. But I though…I really thought that when you let Ethan go, I’d be the one you reached for.”

  I close my eyes. Can this get any worse?

  “But it was never going to be me, was it?” he asks.

  When I open my eyes, the tears spill out. “No,” I say quietly.

  Michael seems to harden before my very eyes. He swallows once, twice. And then with a jerk of his chin, as if that’s the only goodbye he can manage, he opens the door and walks out. Just like that, he’s gone.

  I press my hand to my mouth. I can’t shake the feeling that I’ll never see my best friend again.

  And it’s all Paul Langdon’s fault.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Paul

  Of all the shitty things I’ve done in my life, and there are a few, this is the shittiest.

  I don’t know what I was thinking would happen. That we’d all sit down around the dining table and I’d amuse myself at the little melodrama going on around me? That Olivia would all of a sudden open up, tell me all of her secrets, and explain what exactly it is that drove her to Maine to be my babysitter?

  You’d think I’d have learned my lesson about giving Liv her privacy after texting Michael, but I’m an ass. So I eavesdropped. I listened in on the whole damn thing.

  Olivia cheated on Golden Boy with Michael. And then I forced them into the same room together. I thought I was an ass, but that doesn’t even begin to describe what I am. By the time I realized just how major an apology was due, Michael was nowhere to be seen, and Olivia had locked herself in her room.

  She’s been in there for two hours. I know because I’ve been sitting on the other side of the door for all 120 minutes of that time. For every single one of those minutes, she’s been crying. And not delicate, girly sniffles. We’re talking big, heart-wrenching sobs.

  I close my eyes and lean my head back against the door. The coward in me wants to skulk off to my room, call my dad, and tell him to get Olivia the hell away from me, where I can’t do any more damage to her.

  But I’m done being a coward. I need to face her myself.

  Slowly, deliberately, I climb to my feet. I lift a hand and knock gently with one knuckle, but the crying doesn’t so much as break. I knock harder. This time there’s a pause. A little hiccup. But the door doesn’t open.

  “Olivia.” My voice is hoarse. “Can I come in?”

  I’m prepared for all of the possible responses she could toss at me. Silence. Fuck off. I hate you. Go away. But I’m not really prepared for her to open the door. And I’m certainly not prepared for the pressure in my chest when I see her.

  I barely register the swollen eyes, red nose, and matted hair. I can’t seem to get past the immeasurable hurt written all over her face.

  I do the only thing I can think of. I wrap my arms around her.

  She lets me.

  I caused her heart-wrenching pain, and she’s letting me hold her.

  Nothing has ever felt so good.

  I inch her backward into the bedroom just enough to kick the door shut before gathering her as close as possible. She buries her face in my shoulder and sobs. I don’t know how she has any tears left, but she does.

  I rub my hands up and down her back and over her shoulders in the most soothing motions I can think of. I turn my face into her soft hair. “I’m sorry,” I whisper, my lips pressed to her head. “I’m so damned sorry.”

  Her sobs turn to cries, the cries to hiccups, the hiccups to shuddering breaths. And then finally, finally, she falls silent. She leans back slightly to look at me, and I tense, ready for the words I know I deserve.

  But she doesn’t lay into me or call me names. She doesn’t let me know in explicit detail that I deserve to die a miserable death. (Although I do. I know I do).

  Instead, she does the last thing I expect. She talks to me. She rests her forehead against my collarbone and just talks.

  “I didn’t mean to, you know,” she says, her voice raspy from crying. “I’ve asked myself a million times if some little part of me knew what Michael was going to tell me…what he was going to do…when I went over there that day. But I’ve replayed it a million times, and I wouldn’t have gone if I’d known. I wouldn’t have willingly put myself in the situation of hurting Ethan. If you could have seen his face…”

  Olivia lets out a shuddering breath, and I pull her even closer, rubbing a palm over her back. I want to tell her that in the big scheme of things, this is nothing. That she’ll get over it, that Ethan’s already over it, but I know that to her this is big. I let her continue.

  “I went to Michael’s house…up to his room, thinking he wanted to talk about this girl, Casey, who he’d kind of been seeing. Since he’d never had a serious girlfriend, I figured he was just getting cold feet, or whatever.”

  She’s quiet for a moment.

  “But he didn’t want to talk about Casey,” I say, helping her along.

  She shakes her head. “No. He was acting weird from the second I got there. Michael and I have always been so comfortable together. Or so I thought. But he was jumpy. He would alternate between not meeting my eyes and then looking at me too long and too hard, as though he was searching for something.”

  God help me, I’m actually feeling sorry for the poor guy. I’m all too aware of what it’s like to be helplessly drawn to this girl, even though you know you should be staying far, far away from her.

  “I didn’t see it coming,” she continues, giving a little shake of her head. “One second I was yammering about how excited I was about the internship I’d just applied for, and the next second he’s grabbing my hands, his face just inches from mine, and he’s telling me that he can’t do it anymore. That Ethan’s his best friend, but he can’t do it. That he can’t see me with Ethan without me knowing…”

  She breaks off.

  “He told you he loved you?” I say.

  She nods before lifting her head to look me in the eye. “Then he kissed me. And I didn’t push him away. I let him kiss me.”

  The agony on her face is clear, and I want to tell her not to talk about it anymore, but I know she needs to get it off her chest. Very gently I put my palms on either side of her face. “Why? Did you love him back?”

  Please say no.

  “No,” she whispers, her tongue slipping nervously to wet her lips. “But as for why, I’ve asked myself that a million
times, and I think…I think I kissed him because I knew it was a way out. Ethan and I were getting more and more serious every day, and he was the only guy I’d ever been with, and everyone, myself included, acted like we were going to be engaged at any moment, and I just—”

  “You didn’t want that.”

  “No,” she says with an outward breath. “I thought I did. I wanted to want it. I loved Ethan so much. But somewhere, deep inside of me, something was off. Things were really good, but I wanted more.”

  “And more was Michael?”

  Her face contorts. “No. I knew as soon as his lips touched mine that that wasn’t right either, but then I kissed him back, harder, wanting to feel something, anything. It didn’t go…I mean, I didn’t sleep with him. Not even close. But neither was it just a simple kiss in which I pushed him away and slapped his cheek. I kept trying to lose myself in the kiss, so it got kind of intense, and then Ethan walked in.”

  I don’t have to ask what happened after that.

  “I never thought I could be that girl,” she continues. “The one who cheats on her boyfriend with his best friend. But now I realize nobody plans on that, you know? It’s not something that anybody sets out to do, like, ‘You know, I think I’m going to be like that slutty character in the movies that everybody hates.’ You always imagine that you’re going to be the good girl everybody roots for. You imagine that right up until the very second when you’re not the good girl.”

  My palms are still on her face, and now I hook my thumbs gently under her jaw, tilting her up so she has to look at me.

  “You’re still good, Olivia,” I say quietly. “You made a mistake. A big, shitty one, definitely. Yes, you betrayed Ethan. And yeah, maybe you used Michael. But the fact that you’ve been killing yourself over it shows that that’s not who you are. It was a one-time mistake. You’ll make more mistakes in the future, but you won’t make that one. You’ll learn from it and move on.”