“I’ll buy you new ones.”
“Nate.”
“Frankie,” I snap, turning to look at her again.
She hesitates as if she’s unsure whether it’s safe to leave me alone with him. Then, with an eye roll, she takes the keys I hand her and stumbles over to the front door.
“Fine. But if you kill him, you’re digging the hole all by yourself. I’m passing out now.”
“Drink some water first.”
“Yeah, yeah,” she calls, half waving at me over her head.
Once she’s gone, I take a step closer to Xavi and study his bloody mouth, watching the way he keeps poking at that goddamn piercing with his tongue. I wanna rip it out of his face and choke him with it.
“Why are you here?”
“I…” He stops talking, his features twisting with anxiety as he rubs the back of his neck. “I thought you knew.”
“Knew what?”
“I’m moving in for freshman year.”
“The fuck you are.”
“Nate—”
“I said no, you little prick.”
No.
There’s no way this is happening.
We stare at each other. I already know what he’s thinking before he voices it. I can see the questions he has for me written all over his face. The need to know what the hell I’ve been doing for the last—
“Two years,” he says softly, finishing my thought. “You haven’t been home in two years, Nate. You don’t call or want anyone to come to your games. Your family’s worried sick—”
“Jesus, don’t you get it?” I cut in, grabbing his jaw to shut him up. “I don’t care, Xavi. I’m done with that town and everyone in it.”
He frowns at that, looking up at me in confusion. “Since when?”
Since you, I think to myself, but I don’t bother saying it out loud. Still, I think he knows the answer because he winces and tears his eyes away.
After Katy died, I fell off the rails and spent the better part of a month drowning myself in alcohol and fucking everyone in sight. My dad caught me with the pool boy while his golfing buddies were in the house and told me it was time I cut the shit. I wanted to quit the team—to quit college altogether—but he wasn’t having it. His daughter was in the ground, but life goes on and all that shit.
I hated him.
I hated everyone.
He’d never hit me before, but I earned a back hand to the face for my attitude that day. Then he gave me a choice—be the star he raised me to be or check myself into rehab. I walked out without saying goodbye and haven’t spoken to him since. He showed up to my first few games after that, but I wouldn’t talk to him or even acknowledge his presence there, so he eventually gave up trying. Not because he was giving me the space I wanted, but because I embarrassed him by ignoring him.
I’ve spoken to my mom on the phone a few times, but I haven’t seen her in person since the day I left home for good, and I don’t plan on doing so any time soon. That might make me a heartless asshole, but it’s better this way for all of us. I’m not a very good person when I’m around them—when I’m around him. I haven’t been the same since Xavi took my little sister away from me and ruined my fucking life. Since my parents decided that even if Katy might be gone, keeping up appearances is always most important. Since I became so broken with grief and disgust that I couldn’t even stand to look at them anymore.
It all comes back to him as far as I’m concerned.
Everything is his fault.
And I hate him for it.
Knowing what’s coming, Xavi snatches his jaw out of my hand, trying his hardest to get away from me. Before he can move, I grab him by the collar of his hoodie and punch him again, knocking him back into the side of Frankie’s truck. My knuckles are killing me, but I don’t care. I like the burn, especially when it comes from him. It feels like a drug. My first hit in almost two years.
“Don’t even bother walking into this house,” I say, backing up toward the front door. “Get your ass back on that bike, choose another school, and get the fuck out of my life.”
But I already know he’s not about to do any of those things.
Something’s changed in his eyes since I saw him last. I can see it now. Just for a second, he’s the old Xavi again, the one he was before Katy died. The bratty, defiant little bitch who never did a damn thing he was told. The way he’s looking at me…
The kid’s got balls, I’ll give him that.
CHAPTER 3
XAVI
The front door closes behind him.
“Fuck,” I whisper, cupping the back of my neck as I stare at the big iron gates I drove through a little while ago.
I thought I was ready for this, but after seeing him again, after getting my ass kicked again and finding out he had no idea I was coming…
I dig my fingers into my throbbing eye sockets.
This was a mistake. I should have just gone back to my hole where I belong.
Before I went to rehab three months ago, I was spending most of my time locked away in my bedroom at my mom’s house, blinds and windows closed, lights off. My very own pity party pad for one.
I took a year off after I graduated high school because everything just felt so meaningless without Katy. It felt wrong at the time, and it still does, coming to the same college we were supposed to go to together. Hawthorne University—an elite campus for spoiled rich kids like ourselves, about an hour’s drive from our hometown.
I’m not here by choice, but I’ll admit it didn’t take much to convince me. Because deep down, I know she’d want this for me. She’d want me to do this for her. I never wanted to go—I’m not really the college kid type—but she begged and assured me we’d have the time of our lives. She had it all planned out. We’d live with Nate and Carter in their badass house off campus, whether they liked it or not, and then once they graduated, it would be all ours for our final two years. I eventually agreed because I’d have done anything for her. I’d have followed her off a bridge if she asked me to. She was my best friend. My only fucking friend.
Dropping my ass down on the freezing cold ground, I lean back against the side of my bike and try calling the prick I already tried three times when I first pulled up. He was supposed to meet me here almost an hour ago.
He doesn’t answer the phone, so I text him again.
Xavi
Where are you, man?
Sighing, I dig my wallet out of my pocket and pull out the folded-up strip of photos I keep inside. I told myself I wouldn’t do this when I got here, but I can't help it. Looking at this calms me down just as much as it breaks my heart.
Careful not to crease it more than it already is, I run my fingers over Katy’s beautiful face, remembering the day we took these pictures together. We were messing around at the mall. She really needed to pee, and I thought it’d be funny to drag her into one of those old school photo booths and trap her in there with me. She was laughing so hard she was screaming, and she almost pissed herself right there when I pinned her to the seat and tickled her until she throat-punched me.