“No,” I choke out, shaking my head. “You’re lying.”
She’s not dead.
She can’t be dead.
But he’s not lying.
A broken noise escapes my throat, the tears bursting from my eyes, and I can feel him watching them fall as if he’s fascinated by them. He’s staring at me again, his fingers clutching my shirt as if he knows I’ll fall apart if he doesn’t hold me up.
I wish he’d let me fall.
“It should have been you,” he says after a minute, granting my unspoken wish and letting me go.
I slide down to the floor, struggling not to throw up as I scoot away from him.
I didn’t think it was possible to feel this much pain again, but there it is, eating me up and swallowing me from the inside out.
This feels worse than it did when I lost my older brother three years ago. At least when he died, there was nothing I could have done. I was just a kid, and he was killed in a car accident.
But Katy…I could have been there for her tonight. I could have stopped her from taking those pills. I could have saved her.
Pulling myself back up to my feet, I stumble my way toward the door I walked through a minute ago. I don’t want to leave my best friend here without saying goodbye, without telling her how sorry I am and how much I love her, but he’s not letting me stay. And even if I had the energy to fight him right now, I’d lose anyway.
“Xavi?” he calls, waiting until I turn my head to look him in the eye. “You’re dead to me, you understand? If I ever have to look at your face again, I’ll break it.”
“mars” by YUNGBLUD plays on repeat through my car stereo—the last song I remember Katy listening to before I dropped her off at home last night. I’m torturing myself, but I can’t stop.
“Xavi!” she sings my name, her goofy laugh hitting my ears for the hundredth time in the last two hours. “You know I hate it when you ghost me like this. Where are you? I wanna go out. Call me right now or I’m going without you!”
I hit the play button again, tipping my head back against the headrest.
Katy’s blind—was blind—and even though she could text if she wanted to, she preferred using voice notes.
I stare at the roof and listen to her voice, tears soaking my face and neck as I sip the bottle of vodka I found under her seat.
“Xavi!” she sings my name…
CHAPTER 2
NATE
PRESENT
“I’m just saying, guys are usually so much easier to fuck around with than girls,” Frankie says, holding on to my shoulder as I all but carry her out of my car. “They don’t ask for much. They hardly ever want anything serious. They just wanna get their dicks wet, right? I thought Myles was like that. But then he catches some freshman guy doing a body shot off my chest and he just loses it. Says I’m out here making a fool out of him or some shit. How was I supposed to know that’d make him jealous? I’m not his girlfriend or his mother. You know what I mean?”
I don’t have a clue what she’s talking about, but I still nod, helping her along toward the huge, six-bedroom house that my best friend Carter and I rented for college. I like it because it’s far away enough from campus that I don’t have to deal with anyone, but close enough that it only takes me ten minutes to get to class and practice.
It was only supposed to be the two of us at first, but then our teammate Easton got thrown out of his apartment by his girlfriend last year, so Carter thought it’d be fun to let him move in with us. Frankie moved in just a few months ago. She was in a bit of a tough spot when I met her, so I told her she could stay a couple nights until she figured something else out. I’m still waiting for her to leave.
She stumbles again and then angrily rips her heels off her feet. “Stupid shoes.”
“I don’t think it’s the shoes, Frank.”
“Eat my ass,” she sasses, shoving the heels at my abs.
It’s not even four in the afternoon yet, but this is what she gets for partying with the boys all night and then continuing on for half the day. The break between New Year and the start of next semester is basically one long party in this town, a way for us to get it all out of our systems before it’s back to the grind next week.
My teammates love having her around because she’s cool as shit, but then this thing went down with Myles today and Easton called me to pick her up before she cut the boy’s dick off and made him suck it in front of everyone. Her words, not his, apparently.
“Come on,” I urge, moving her tangled, white blonde hair out of her face so she can see where she’s going. “Let’s get you to bed.”
“But you said we were gonna party at home.”
“I lied to get you out of there.”
She looks at me like I betrayed her, and I let out a laugh. Just then, someone makes a quiet, coughing sound. I was so focused on Frankie, I didn’t even see the dark-haired guy leaning against the motorcycle parked beside Frankie’s truck. I narrow my eyes to get a good look at him, then freeze. My blood runs cold as I take in his dark features, his shoulders hooked up to his ears with his hands tucked into his pockets. He looks nervous as he stares right back at me, but then something seems to dawn on him and he pales. “Fuck.”
His low voice snaps me out of my momentary state of shock, and I drop Frankie’s shoes to the ground as I move toward him. He curses again, stepping away from the bike to face me head-on. He opens that big mouth of his to say something, but it’s too late for that. I’m already shoving my fist into it, knocking his ass to the gravel with one hit.
“Nate!” Frankie shrieks behind me.
I ignore her, too busy looking down at Xavi Hart and wondering what the fuck he thinks he’s doing on my driveway. He hasn’t changed much since the last time I saw him. He’s still just as short as he was when he was seventeen, his messy hair still the same shade of dark brown. He’s wearing dark ripped jeans and a black hoodie. His eyes look a little bluer and brighter than they used to, but that doesn’t mean shit. He might not be on anything right now, but this worthless little fuckup could never stay off it for long.
“Get up.”
“Give me a second, will you?” He winces, squinting at the gray sky above us.
Pussy.
I didn’t even hit him that hard. Definitely not as hard as I did when he had the nerve to show up to my sister’s funeral. Or on her birthday a few weeks later when I found him passed out on the ground in front of her headstone.
“Who is he?” Frankie asks from behind me.
“Go upstairs. I’ll be there in a minute,” I tell her, then to Xavi, I repeat, “Get up.”
Sighing, he swipes the blood off his lip and pushes himself up. He’s still got a piercing there—a little black ring on the corner of his mouth—and all I can think about is hitting it again. My face must show my intent before I can act on it because he quickly jumps back a step and lifts his hands up in surrender. “Nate…”
God, I hate the way he says my name.
Frankie still hasn’t gone inside like I told her to, cursing me under her breath as she picks up her shoes. “These are Jimmy Choos, you know?”