I LEFT her office and entered a graciously empty hallway. Pixie Adler must have been off-duty, because I didn’t even see her policing the long line of lockers. I took my time walking down the hall, planning on what I would say to Beckett.
I wanted to warn him, but I also needed to apologize to him, outside of the glow of stadium lights. I imagined standing in front of him, looking up slightly because of his height, staring into his stunning, soulful eyes, and telling him the truth. That I loved him, and that I was sorry.
One of the classroom doors opened, and I froze, on edge. Beckett’s fit frame slipped into the hallway, sucking all the air from my lungs. Hope lurched through my chest, tearing at my heart on the way.
As if sensing my presence, he turned and took me in, his eyes going from honey to steel. “What are you doing here?”
Any optimism I had left after his cold greeting was gone. The light was gone from his face, pain and distrust replacing it.
“Well?” he demanded.
I swallowed and took a step toward him. He took a step back.
My heart shattered even more.
I wrung my hands and looked at him. “Please, let me explain.”
“I don’t know why you keep asking to explain,” he said. “You agreed to Merritt’s bet. It cost us the game, Rory.”
At that moment, I noticed the blue cast on his wrist. My heart fell. “You got injured?”
“I fractured my wrist,” he said harshly. “The team got trampled.”
Regret ripped through me, as well as anger at Merritt. “I was going to tell you after the game, I promise. I didn’t want to distract you.”
His eyes darkened. “So you lied to me instead?”
“I didn’t want to. Once I got to know you—and fell for you—I wanted to tell you, but there was never a good time…”
“You’re right. There was never a good time for the girl I loved to tell me it was all a lie.”
His word caught in my mind, ricocheted in my ears. “Loved?”
Anger ripped through his voice as his fingers did the same to his hair. “Damn it, Rory, I loved you! I didn’t mean to. I thought you were nice, and funny, and you were a hell of a lot better to hang out with than a bunch of drunk people, and the more I got to know you…I fell. I thought you were different.”
“I am different,” I argued. “I’m not like her. The whole reason I took this stupid bet was to defend girls like me—so we could show her that we actually deserved a happily ever after.”
“That’s not an excuse!” He shook his head. “You don’t get to keep secrets and manipulate to get what you want just because of your size.”
His words tugged at the fraying edges of my heart, pushing where it hurt the most. “You’re one to talk, Beckett!”
“What does that mean?”
“Forget it,” I said, turning to leave. I may have hurt Beckett, but that didn’t mean he had the right to hurt me back. I began walking toward my locker, knowing I needed to get my books.
“Get back here, Rory,” he yelled after me. “What were you going to say?”
I ignored him, continuing to walk, continuing to let the anger fuel me when I knew intense pain was only seconds away.
Beckett’s hand reached my shoulder and stopped me in my tracks. “Stop running, and say it to my face!”
The cracks of the dam grew wider, letting anger burst through. I spun on my heel and got right in his face. “You act like you’re so pure and honest, but you can’t tell me you were in love with Merritt for an entire year. I know you. You were tired of her after the first day, but you still stayed with her! And what about your dad?” I pointed toward downtown, toward the castle they hid away in. “What does he think you do on Tuesday nights?”
Beckett failed to meet my eyes.
“Have you even applied to a photography program? Or are you just going to lie to him and yourself your entire life saying you want to follow his dream?”
“ENOUGH!” Beckett roared. “You don’t get to walk up to me after what you did and think you have any effect on my life.”
Several classroom doors opened, teachers looking out at us with students right behind them.
Regret washed through me. Here I was, making another scene in front of my classmates, dragging Beckett down with me. I shouldn’t have said those things. “Beck, I—”
“No!” he said. “Don’t you get it, Rory? It’s over. I don’t even know what I’m doing here or what you’re trying to save.”
Regardless of the teachers’ quiet audience, tears streamed down my cheeks. I couldn’t take what he was saying, couldn’t take the sting out of his words and the hopelessness from my chest. “What about last Thursday on the patio? Less than a week ago we were—”
“It doesn’t matter!” he yelled. “Can’t you take a hint? Merritt was right.
You and I are never going to be together.”
His words slapped me just as effectively as a full-on blow could have.
The bell rang, jarring us both. People poured into the hallway, the teachers no longer willing or able to stop them.
I pushed forward toward my locker and froze. Whorey Rory had been written in hot pink spray paint across the plain blue surface.
Someone seemed to notice it was me staring at the graffiti, because a humored murmur rippled through the crowd.
“Disperse,” Headmaster Bradford’s voice thundered. “To your classes.
Immediately.”
Mom came to me, putting her arm around my shoulders. “Honey…”
I shook her off, going to my locker and entering the combination with shaky hands. My fingers fumbled with my health book before getting a good grip of it and yanking it—along with my books for every class until lunch—out of my locker.
Mom watched as I went down the hall for health. But she wasn’t the only one.
Beckett stood there, his eyes wide. No words crossed his lips. Only silence as he swallowed and looked at me with doleful eyes.
“Looks like Merritt won after all,” I said and brushed past him, hurrying to get as far away as I could from the beautiful guy I’d never have.
