Chapter 22

22

Bodhi

I choked again at practice. Just putting my feet in the water set off such a torrential downpour of oh fuck no in my system that I’d embarrassed myself in front of all of Elite for the umpteenth time.

“Lawson. Get in here,” Coach bellowed from his office, his voice so loud it overrode the noise Elite made in the locker room.

Or maybe I was just that attuned to his voice. Always listening. Always wanting to hear it.

“You want me to come with?” Ryan asked from down the row.

I made a face. “Yeah, and right after, maybe you can come to the bathroom with me and wipe my ass after I shit.”

Nearby, Kruger made a sound. “Bro. You been watching that show too? I didn’t believe it at first. Had to Google it.”

There was a collective pause, and then everyone turned to Kruger.

“What?” I asked, because, seriously, what the fuck was he saying?

Kruger made a face. “Oh, that’s not what you meant? Guess I wouldn’t be watching either if it weren’t for my wife.”

“You’re married?” I said, surprised.

“I’m offended you look so shocked.”

“Just wondering how you conned someone into marrying you.”

“Please,” he scoffed. “I’m the whole package.”

Jamie snickered. “They aren’t married. They’re engaged.”

“Same difference,” Kruger muttered.

“No, it’s not,” everyone within earshot said. Guess they’d had this conversation before.

“Haters stay hatin’,” Kruger sang, turning back to his open locker.

“Bro,” Jamie called. “You can’t vague-book us like that. What show?”

Kruger turned back. “ My Lady Jane . Some drama about the monarchy in England back in the day. Then some people started shifting into animals and shit. Kinda weird but oddly entertaining. Jess loves it.”

I was still confused. How was anyone supposed to keep up with the conversations they had? “And you’re telling us about it why?” I wondered.

“Grooms of the Stool,” Prism spoke up.

Pretty sure it was the first time I’d ever heard his voice. And what a weird thing to say.

“What?” Wes asked.

“Back in the day, the kings and queens had people to wipe”—Prism gestured to his ass—“their butts for them. They were called Grooms of the Stool.”

“That can’t be a thing,” Wes said, looking doubtful.

“Bros. The intranet confirmed it. It’s real,” Kruger said.

“Don’t you mean internet?” I corrected.

Ryan shook his head. “We say intranet around here. Right, P?”

Nodding, Prism smiled. A wave of discomfort washed over me, a sensation of being out of place. These guys had inside jokes and obvious history. They were clearly tight friends, and I was just… standing here in the middle of it like a third wheel. I didn’t fit with these guys. I probably never would.

“You watch it with Jess?” Jamie asked, and Kruger nodded. He turned to Prism. “What’s your excuse?”

Prism shrugged. “She’s my sister.”

“Valid.” Jamie allowed. Then, “But don’t be telling my sister, or I’ll have to watch it too.”

Ryan stretched out his arm to Jamie for a fist bump. “Good looking out, bro.”

Lump in my throat, I slammed the locker door and went to see what Coach wanted. Maybe it was to officially throw me off the team. Maybe my panic-induced trip to the bleachers during practice gave him all the time he needed to decide I wasn’t worth the effort.

After I was off the team, I’d probably get tossed out of Westbrook, booted back to Cali, and thrown in jail, never to be heard from again.

“Hey.” Ryan’s hand clapped down on my shoulder, and I glanced around at him. He seemed impenetrable to the scowl I painted on my face, his blue eyes almost bored. “The team goes to Shirley’s every morning after practice. It’s tradition. They have good waffles and give out extra fries.”

“Bro, they only give you extra fries,” Jamie mocked, totally giving away the fact he was listening to our conversation.

“The waffles are bomb, though,” Wes put in.

“Burgers too,” Prism added.

Oh goody. This was a group conversation. Participation from everyone required.

“You should come. Hang out,” Ryan told me.

So I can feel even more alone than I do right now?

I twisted around, finding Rush and Lars down the row, their heads together, having their own conversation.

“Is he coming?” I said, loud enough to make his blond head turn in my direction.

“He is your teammate and our friend,” Ryan said, voice unforgiving.

“Hard pass,” I said, brushing past a glaring Rush to go into Coach’s office.

Coach barely glanced at me before ripping another one of those damn yellow sticky notes off the pad and holding it out. “Here.”

“What is it?” I asked, not coming farther into the room.

He huffed and stalked forward, reaching out to stick the note directly to the front of my shirt. “It’s the name of your new therapist. First appointment is next week. I got it moved up.”

My brows drew down. “I thought they couldn’t get me in before the end of the month.”

“Mm.” He agreed. “I called over there, and they found room.”

I don’t know why, but I found that so hot. The way he seemingly bent things to his will. The way he did it for me.

I ripped the sticky off my chest and stared down at it. “I didn’t need an earlier appointment.”

“You can’t even put your big toe in the pool without a full-on panic attack.”

“So cut me from the team,” I deadpanned.

“No,” he rebuked, then pointed at the note. “Time and place are there. Don’t be late.”

Crumpling the paper in my hand, I turned and walked out. I needed some space. The locker room was thankfully clearing out and I stealthily avoided looking at the pool on my way to the parking lot, but it was impossible to avoid the shiny blue Corvette parked right at the curb.

“Get in,” Rush called through the open passenger window.

“I’m not going to Shirley’s.” I refused.

“Neither am I.”

I pursed my lips, then got into the Corvette. The second I did, I was assaulted with nostalgia, the kind that made your airway feel too narrow to draw in a proper breath. I’d spent so much time in this Corvette in the past. It was almost like a second home. And then, like everything else, it was gone. Rush was gone.

I knew it was my fault, but it hurt the same. What was I supposed to do? My sister was dead. He was in cuffs. The evidence pointed to him.

In that moment, I felt I had to make a choice. My sister or him.

My sister lost her life. She would never lose me.

That choice cost me a lot, but truthfully, I’d make it again.

Do the best you can until you know better. Then do better. I did the best I could at that time with the information I’d been given and my shattered world. When I learned better… I tried to do better.

I failed.

Sometimes you just can’t put things back the way they were. No matter how much you want to. Maybe if I hadn’t been so grief-muddled, I would have known. Known that there was no way in hell Jason Rush could ever kill my sister.

Brynne loved Rush. More than she should. And ultimately, that was her downfall.

Maybe I blamed him for that too.

Maybe if he’d loved her more—the way she wanted him to—Brynne would still be alive today.

That’s not fair, reason whispered deep inside me.

Pain rarely listens to reason.

The Corvette pulled away from the curb, and I stared at everything except the man driving. Gone were the easy insults, loud music, and stupid bets. My eyes moved to another place that would bring another bout of bittersweet nostalgia.

Brows pinching, I said, “Is this not the same car?”

Rush looked at me from the corner of his eye.

“The scratch,” I said, leaning forward to rub my finger over the leather on the dash where I’d scratched it one night when I’d been drunk. “It’s not here.”

“I got a new car,” Rush said, downshifting. “The last one was totaled. Don’t you remember our visit with Brittney?”

Right. I’d come to Westbrook during spring semester last year to tell Rush I believed him. To try and mend the relationship we’d lost. It hadn’t gone well at all. The second I saw him, red filled my vision and anger I thought I’d let go of reared its ugly head. All we did was argue and throw hurtful words at each other. And then Brittney showed up. My sister’s best friend. Well, apparently, she’d been here a while and no one knew. She also blamed Rush… We all had. She came for revenge.

“Your Vette was totaled?” I asked, thinking back. I hadn’t realized. But it wasn’t exactly like we’d had a civil conversation.

“Yep.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, meaning it. “I know how much you loved that car.”

“Not more than my family,” he replied like it was no big deal.

They were nice words. Words of a good man. A loyal man. They twisted inside me, mucking and muddying the clear thinking I wanted to have and needlessly reminding me I was an outsider.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“Breakfast.”

“I said I’m not going to Shirley’s.”

“That’s not the only place in town.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Well, I am, and we need to talk.”

I fell quiet even though a part of me wanted to keep arguing. Guess it wasn’t as strong as the other part of me that wanted to talk. Like a real talk, without fighting. Like old times when he was my best friend. When I fit somewhere and with someone. Part of me still really wanted to repair the break between us. I ached to apologize, for him to understand why I had to side with my sister. I missed him. Our friendship. The loss of it cut me almost as deep as the death of my twin.

I didn’t know how to say any of that out loud, though. Whenever I tried, the words got jumbled. Why was it so much easier to be angry and lash out? Why was it so damn hard to ask for forgiveness?

Maybe you aren’t worthy of it.

There once was a time that I could say anything to Rush. And now, every single word felt weighted with the potential to explode in my face.

We said nothing else the rest of the short drive, and then he pulled into the lot of someplace off campus that looked like a coffee house.

“Food isn’t as good as Shirley’s, but the coffee’s better,” Rush said, turning off the ignition and getting out of the sports car without any hesitation.

I followed after him, wishing I’d grabbed a hoodie this morning for over the T-shirt I had on. But I’d been distracted and preoccupied by Emmett. I was used to Malibu weather, not this East Coast stuff that was already hinting at approaching fall. The air was cool, prickling my arms, so I folded them across my middle to shield them from the breeze.

The place was warmer inside, the scent of coffee overtaking everything else and the sound of music playing through speakers. It was busy, as most coffee places were in the morning, and there was a line at the counter, stretching in front of a case of pastries.

Rush was already halfway there when someone called out, “Rush, bro! What’s up?”

He looked up and smiled. A genuine smile, one I hadn’t seen in a long time. “Bro,” he called back. “How’s it going?”

Instead of getting in the back of the line, he smoothly cut through, winking at a girl who let him pass, and leaned over the counter to fist bump one of the baristas.

The guy making the coffee called out behind him, and a few other people came out of the back, all of them greeting Rush as though he were some sort of celebrity. I hung back, not sure what to do, and shuffled from foot to foot.

“Ready for the new season?” one of the girls behind the counter asked him.

“I was born ready.”

Her eyes went past him. “Where’s Landry?” Her gaze drifted to me and then kept going. “Lars?”

I told myself it didn’t bother me that she could disregard me so fast as if I couldn’t possibly be the one with him. How, at one time, it was me people asked about whenever he showed up to places alone.

“They’re at Shirley’s with Elite,” he explained easily. “I’m sure Lars will be around plenty, though. You know he needs his espresso.”

My teeth clamped together, shooting sparks of pain into my jaws.

“I brought my other bro in this a.m.” Rush went on, glancing back at me and waving me forward. “This is Bodhi. He’s new to Elite, so I wanted to show him the best place to get coffee.”

I shuffled forward, thinking of how he’d just introduced me as his friend.

“Bodhi’s from Cali like me.”

“What’s up?” I said, gesturing with my chin.

“Bodhi, hey.” The male barista greeted me. “Welcome to Elite. Any friend of Rush’s is a friend of ours.”

I nodded, not sure what to say.

“I’ll let you get back to it,” Rush said, gesturing to the coffee machines. “I’ll be in line.”

“You just getting your usual?” one of the girls asked.

“Yeah.” He nodded, then glanced at me. “He’ll have the same.”

I bristled.

“We’ll bring it over when it’s ready,” she said, not finding it odd that he ordered for me.

He probably ordered for Lars too. Gag me.

He started away from the counter, cuffing me on the shoulder so I would go too.

“Oh, Rush?”

He turned back.

“Any allergies?” the barista asked, sliding a glance at me.

“No, but I appreciate you asking.”

“You know how it is,” she said.

“I do.” Rush agreed. “Thanks, bro.”

We went across the room to a back table with only two chairs.

“So how is it?” I asked, sliding into one and gazing at Rush.

He debated a second, then said, “Lars is severely allergic to nuts. We’ve made it very clear to the places we go to on the regular. And you’re new, so they probably just wanted to be cautious.”

“Of course that was about him,” I muttered.

Rush’s face darkened. “What’s your problem with him?”

“This is what you wanted to talk about?”

“One of the things.”

“Oh, there’s a list,” I deadpanned. “Goody.”

“Cut the shit, Bodhi. What did Lars ever do to you?”

Stole my life .

“I don’t need a reason to dislike him.” I sniffed.

“Actually, you do,” Rush countered.

“Maybe I’m just not wrapped around his finger like everyone else around this place seems to be,” I snapped, temper rising. “Everyone coddles and protects him like he’s a puppy and not a man.”

And that makes me insanely jealous.

Scowling, Rush leaned over the small round tabletop, dark eyes intent on mine as he drove his pointer finger into the wood as though he could grind in his words. “You don’t like him? Fine. But I’m telling you right now to stay off his ass. He’s not like us.”

I scoffed. “Like us? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“He’s not an asshole.”

The chair legs scrapped over the floor, drawing attention when I shot up from the seat. “Thanks for the invite for breakfast, but I’m not going to sit here and be insulted.”

“It’s not an insult,” he said, grabbing my wrist and yanking me back down. “It’s the truth, and we both know it.”

“Fuck you.”

He gave me a look like my words had just proved his. Asshole.

The chair legs scraped again when I pulled it back up to the table.

“Lars has been through a lot of shit,” Rush explained. “He doesn’t need you glaring and throwing insults.”

“No more shit than the rest of us,” I said, bitter that he seemed to put his new bestie on a pedestal no one else sat on.

The female barista from earlier appeared, carrying a small black tray. “Orders up.” Her voice was far too cheerful for this conversation. Rush leaned back and smiled as she slid two coffees and a plate in front of each of us. In the center was a cylinder shape wrapped in tinfoil.

“Bro, thanks. This looks awesome,” Rush said. “I appreciate it,” he told her, reaching into his sweats to pull out some cash. After counting out a few twenties, he handed them over.

“I’ll bring your change,” she said.

“Keep it,” Rush told her.

She smiled. “Thanks, Rush.”

“That was an awfully big tip,” I said when she walked away.

“Yeah, and I didn’t have to stand in line like everyone else. Guaranteed, this coffee is hot and these breakfast burritos are fresh.”

I did like a breakfast burrito.

Rush peeled back the foil to reveal the end of a neatly wrapped burrito and took a massive bite. When he pulled it back, steam rose from the top. He made a loud sound of appreciation. “Bro, this slaps! There’s about to be no crumbs.”

Laughter rang around us.

A lump formed in my throat, and I lifted the coffee, taking a sip of the lightly sweetened latte. Not caramel, though. Kinda wished there was caramel. Kinda felt like I needed a trauma latte for this conversation.

“Look,” Rush said, his cheek puffing out with food. “Lars got caught up in a bad relationship back in Sweden. The guy really fucked him over, and yeah, Elite is pretty protective of him.”

“Like the guy beat him?”

Rush dropped the burrito onto his plate like he’d lost his appetite. Some egg and potato fell out. Grabbing his coffee, he looked at me. “Yeah, like that.”

A split second of regret pummeled me. I felt sorry for that blond-haired life-stealer. As much as I hated him, not even I would wish abuse on him.

I opened my mouth to ask more, but Rush cut me off with a shake of his head.

“That’s not my story to tell, so don’t ask. I’m just letting you know if you back off him, you’ll have an easier time with Elite.”

“Like I care,” I muttered.

“Watch it with Wes too,” Rush said. “Jamie and Ryan are his guard dogs. And you definitely don’t want to get on Max’s bad side.”

Yeah, I’m already there , I thought, recalling the way Max, Win, and Arsen found me in the locker room.

“What about Prism?” I questioned.

Rush scoffed. “Bro, Kruger will be like a hemorrhoid on your ass if you even look cross-eyed at Prism. And Arsen is pretty cool, but when it comes to P, he doesn’t play around.”

“You get along with all of them,” I observed.

Rush took another bite of his breakfast. “Wasn’t always that way.”

“So what changed?” I pressed.

“This isn’t what we came to talk about.”

“I’m talking about it anyway.”

His lips pursed. “You really wanna know?”

No. I nodded.

“They found out I was accused and arrested of murder, and they believed me when I said I didn’t do it.”

I just had to bring it up, didn’t I? “She’s my sister,” I said, voice tight.

“She was mine too.”

The strong emotion in me had me shooting forward, my chest pressing into the edge of the tabletop. “Not by blood. Not by DNA. When she died, it was like…” I inhaled deeply and shook my head.

“Like what?” He pushed, staring at me like it was a dare.

“It was like half of me died too. You have no idea what that feels like. To be walking around alive but feeling dead. To have your parents look at you like a consolation prize and reminder of what they lost. To hear them talking at night when they think you aren’t listening, saying they wished it was me instead of her.”

Rush abandoned his food and gripped the edges of the table so hard his knuckles turned white. “They would never say that.” He was vehement.

My voice was sad. “Just like I’d never blame you for murder, right?”

He sucked in a breath.

“They moved all the way to Italy and made it clear I wasn’t welcome,” I said quietly, keeping my eyes trained on the corner of a paper napkin. “You weren’t the only one they blamed. They blamed me too. I wasn’t there that night. I should have been. They blamed me for not saving her, and then they blamed me for living when she didn’t.”

“Bodes.”

The nickname was a dagger to my heart. But even stabbed, it kept beating. Much to my parents’ disappointment, I lived, and my heart continued to beat even around the wound of everyone’s dagger-like words.

“Don’t call me that,” I whispered. That was a name from another time. Another relationship.

We weren’t those people anymore.

“Maybe that’s why it was so easy to blame you,” I said, partly surprising myself with the stark confession. “Because if I blamed you, I wouldn’t be the only one responsible. Because bearing that crushing weight of guilt alone might literally have killed me.”

The table wobbled when he leaned over it. “What do you mean?”

“I should have been there that night,” I said, all of it spilling out as though the dagger he’d plunged into me hadn’t just hurt but caused the contents of my deepest secrets to spill out. “I knew she was upset about you. She was pregaming at the house. I told her to stay home. She told me to choose.”

“What?” His voice was raw. I understood that sound… because it was the way I felt.

I shook my head, fighting back the welling tears. “She was drinking and upset. She didn’t mean it. But it was the last conversation we ever had, and it left its mark.”

“What conversation?”

My watery eyes met his dark ones. “Brynne told me to choose between you and her. She said I shouldn’t be friends with you anymore because it hurt her too much. She didn’t want to see you if she couldn’t have you the way she wanted. She said if I really loved her, then I would cut you out.”

Rush’s throat worked, and he reached up to rub a hand along his jaw. “That doesn’t sound like Brynne.”

“And the stuff she did and said to you that night… was like her?”

His face turned grim. “She kissed me.”

My head whipped up. For a moment, shock overrode all other emotion, and fuck me, was it a relief. “What?”

He nodded. “I didn’t tell anyone. But yeah, she kissed me, and when I pushed her away, she lost it,” he explained. “I never meant to hurt her.”

“I never meant to hurt you,” I whispered.

His entire face changed, shuttered in a way that made me feel like I was looking at a stranger. Rush was good at protecting himself, better than I could ever be.

He didn’t believe me. I couldn’t fault him for that. I didn’t believe a lot of shit he said in the past. But maybe I had. Maybe it was just what I thought before—him or my sister. In some sick sense, in my head, it kind of became her dying wish. Maybe deep, deep down, I’d always known he didn’t do it, but I convinced myself he did because it made it easier.

“She told me to choose, and I told her I wouldn’t. I told her she was selfish to ask me. And then, so I wouldn’t have to be in the middle, I met up with some hookup I found on Bangr. I was screwing some nobody while my sister was dying.”

Silence blanketed the table. The kind that even blocked out the music and other people around us. The kind that left me teetering but also weighted, unable to get up and run, forced to sit there and float in the truth I’d just vomited up.

“So when I was accused…” Rush finally said, voice like gravel.

“I chose her.” I confirmed. “If I had only stayed that night. If I’d only been there. The truth is, Rush…” I paused, his name so heavy to speak. It took a moment for my heart to pump enough blood through my veins to give me the strength to finish. “It’s not your fault Brynne is dead. It’s mine.”

The confession dropped like a bomb, and you’d think, after all this time of locking it away inside me, that letting it free, voicing those words, would make me lighter.

It wasn’t confessing that would make me feel a modicum of atonement, though. What I needed was forgiveness.

An aggressive, almost angry sound rumbled in his throat, and he reached out to grab a handful of my hair and tug. “What happened is not your fault.” His voice was low but so impassioned that it filled me up inside. Blinking, I looked at him. “Cobalt killed her. Not you. Not me. Cobalt .”

“I wasn’t there,” I whispered.

“I was, and I still couldn’t save her.”

“That’s different,” I argued.

“Why? Because he drugged me?”

I nodded.

“He probably would have done the same to you.”

I met his eyes, no longer shuttered but the eyes of my old best friend. “I should have been there, Jason.”

“Honestly, I’m glad as hell you weren’t.”

His words surprised me. So much that I gasped.

His lip curled up, amusement glittering in his eyes. “Who knows what would have gone down if you had been there? If you would have gotten hurt too. Or worse. Honestly, just losing one of my best friends was a mindfuck. I never would have survived if it had been you both.”

“I thought you hated me.”

“I tried to. But really, what I hated was that the guy I trusted more than anyone else believed I could do something so gnarly. That you didn’t even have enough respect for me to even talk to me. To hear me out.”

“I couldn’t hear you out, Rush. It would have made it harder to honor Brynne.”

“Yeah.” He spoke quietly. “Yeah, I get that now.”

Releasing my hair, he reclined back in the chair, casually lifting the cup for a long drink. “Should have burned down the main house,” he said with coffee still on his lips.

I burst out laughing, drawing a few stares. But the humor died quickly, the heaviness of life not allowing it to remain. “You came when I called.”

“I told you, even though I tried, I couldn’t hate you.”

I nodded.

He leaned in, vehemence in his tone. “You’re better than this, Bodhi. Better than the drugs, the alcohol, and whatever else you got involved in. Brynne died, but you didn’t. She wouldn’t want this life for you. Deep down, you know it.”

A flash of defiance coursed through me and, with it, the searing heat of anger. He made it sound so easy. He made it look easy.

It wasn’t.

“Not everyone can just start over like you,” I bit out.

“You think it was easy?” He challenged. “It wasn’t. But it’s worth it.”

I fought the urge to throw out more barbs. To tell him he had a whole group of people who helped him, who embraced him. Who did I have?

A man who said he wanted me but kept me a secret. And Rush, the ex-best friend I thought hated me up until five minutes ago.

But he doesn’t hate you. Was there a chance Rush and I could get back the friendship I’d regretted losing every day?

Leaning back in his seat, Rush’s wide shoulders shifted as he reached into the pocket of his sweats. When he drew back, there was a card in his hand.

“Here,” he said, laying it on the table in front of me.

I looked at it and then back to him. “A dorm room keycard?”

He nodded. “It’s my room at Peregrine Hall. Just a few doors down from the one you stayed in.”

“Why are you giving this to me?”

“You need a room. I have one. It’s better than couch surfing at Coach’s.”

Before I could decide how to react to that, he went on.

“And there’s no wanker of a roommate there to hassle you. You’ll have some space. A quiet place to study.” He paused, a slight curve tugging at his lips. “You still like to study?”

I rolled my lips in and shrugged.

He chuckled.

Warmth pooled in my belly. Not the kind I felt around Emmett but one I had missed.

“But don’t you already have a roommate?” I asked.

“It was Lars, but he moved in with Win.”

I nodded.

“And now I will too.”

The words took a moment to sink in, and even then, I replayed them, trying to understand. “What do you mean?”

“Me and Landry are moving in with Lars, Win, Wes, and Max,” he explained, and the bottom fell out of my stomach.

No. My entire stomach dropped out of me and landed right there under the table. Splat!

“Y-you’re moving in with Lars?” I questioned.

He nodded. “Yeah. They have an extra bedroom. You need a dorm. I need to not see Coach and his whistle every morning at four a.m.” He grabbed up his cup. “It works out.”

I tried not to look dejected. But how could I not look the way that I was one thousand percent feeling?

Rush must have noticed because he lowered the cup from his lips. “Bodhi…”

“I, ah, thought you were going to be my roommate.” I thought we would be friends again.

Completely mortified and, to be honest, hurt, I jumped up and raced out, leaving my coffee and untouched burrito behind.

Outside, the chilly air slapped me in the face and made my eyes sting. I sniffled and gazed around the lot, wondering where to go. Undecided, I just started walking, following the sidewalk where it would eventually give out to the road.

“Bodhi!” Rush called, his footsteps heavy behind me.

I ignored him and kept going. I was done with this conversation. I’m so stupid.

“Bodhi!” His hand slammed down on my shoulder, pulling me around.

I wrenched free and snarled. “Leave me alone.”

“C’mon, Bodhi. I didn’t mean—” He stopped, cursed beneath his breath. “I’m sorry, okay? I didn’t mean to imply… I didn’t think you’d even want to room with me.”

I laughed.

“Up until ten minutes ago, we had the whole battle royale thing going on.”

And look how easily I was willing to let it go. Pathetic.

“I do want to be friends again. I wanted it before we even had that talk. I just wasn’t sure it was possible. But now I know it is.”

I scoffed, turned my face, and gazed out across the street.

“But it’s gonna take some time, you know? I can’t just forget everything.”

Why does everyone need time?

“And you can’t either.”

Okay, fair.

“I’m not writing you off.” He tried again, obviously frustrated with my lack of reply. “I want you here at Westbrook.”

“Just not as your roommate,” I echoed.

“No.” He confirmed. “Not as my roommate.”

I turned, and he grabbed my arm. “Take the key, Bodhi. Take the room. It’s a peace offering. A fresh start.”

I glanced at the card he held out, then slowly took it and slid it into my jeans.

“Come on,” he said, gesturing. “I’ll drive you back to campus.”

I trailed along after him because I didn’t know the way back on my own. Instead of going straight to Westbrook, he drove us to Emmett’s townhouse.

“Come on. Let’s get your stuff,” he said, pushing open the driver’s door and palming his keys.

“You have a key to Coach’s house?” I asked as something hot and ugly twisted inside me.

“I spend half my time here.”

The inside of the house smelled like Emmett and brought back memories of last night and this morning.

All my bags were there near the bottom of the steps, and Rush grabbed two and headed back out to the car. I lingered a moment, slowly picking up the last one, gazing around with a hollow feeling in my center.

I couldn’t stay here. This wasn’t my home. Even if Emmett said he wanted me, he wasn’t mine. Because he also needed time.

Rush came back inside, palming the door handle. “Let’s go. I have class.”

I went, fighting the urge to turn and look over my shoulder as he locked up the house and got into the Corvette.

Rush played this like it was some sort of peace offering and a fresh start.

But to me, even after I’d bared my deepest secrets, I was being exiled, and there was no amount of “time” that would ever make me belong.