He had loved me then.
He still loved me now.
And I had walked away from him on that rooftop. I had done it again. Because I thought I was protecting him. Because I thought I was doing the right thing. Because I was too proud or too scared or too stupid to imagine that I could be loved in return.
I couldn’t go into that house. I couldn’t pretend tonight was anything close to normal.
I turned away and headed down the path toward the student center. My throat felt tight. The wind pushed at me harder now, as if urging me along. The sky above had taken on a deeper shade, heavy with the promise of rain or snow.
By the time I reached the Thirsty Thinker, my face was numb, and my hands shook. I stepped inside, letting the door thud shut behind me. Warmth hit me immediately. Music and murmured voices filled the room. The smell of beer and fried food hung in the air. I walked straight to the counter without looking at anyone.
I needed something to drown the storm inside me.
A moment of quiet.
A moment of forgetting.
I didn’t know how long it would last, but I needed it all the same.
EIGHTEEN
Seth
I satin the empty room, lit by the desk lamp, leaning back in my chair and staring out the window. The streetlamps cast an orange haze through the frost on the window glass, sparse snowflakes forcing their way down from the sky.
When my roommate quietly turned the key and pushed the door open, he paused, seeing that I was awake. I watched the reflection of his slouching figure as he shut the door behind himself. He felt bad, but it was too late for that. He was ready to confess, but I already knew. Some paranoid part of me discovered the truth deep within all my doubts, then held on to it until I was certain.
“You’re awake,” Silas said.
I didn’t reply. I didn’t turn the chair around. Why should I? I owed him nothing. Not a reply and definitely not a warning about trusting the wrong person. He would discover that on his own, just like I did.
“Seth?” Silas said, voice thin and wrecked with guilt. “Seth, I didn’t…I didn’t mean to fuck things up for you.”
At least he wasn’t pretending anymore.
“What happened?” he asked.
Finally, I turned the chair around, watching the guilt shatter across his face when his gaze landed on my red, stinging eyes and the hard line of my mouth. “You tell me what happened first. What happened with you and your mystery crush, Silas?”
Silas swallowed. “I’ll tell you everything.”
I shrugged, waiting, and observed him as he crossed the room and sat down on the edge of his bed. He looked at his hands, both resting in his lap, palms up, fingers trembling just enough to make me feel bad for him. But no. I wasn’t going to let pity cloud my judgment. Not when he so carelessly stabbed me and twisted the knife, smiling all along.
“I swore I wouldn’t tell you,” Silas said. “He has these…stupid ideas that coming out would fuck with his career. I didn’t want to out him. Not to anyone. Not even to you.”
“But that wasn’t true the other way around,” I said. “You told him about me and Damon.”
Silas sank a little lower, exhaling and lifting his gaze to meet mine. “I didn’t know why it was such a secret. You never said.”
“And you never thought that telling my brother who I was fucking could complicate things in my life?” I asked, barking a bitter laugh. “He’s a hypocrite, Silas. And so are you.”
“Seth, please,” Silas whispered, leaning in. “I wouldn’t have told him if I knew he hated Damon so much. I just thought it was funny, you know? Yeah, I get it. I’m stupid. Never was that smart. Not like you.”
“Right,” I said. “It can’t be your fault. You just weren’t thinking.”
He nodded and turned away from my gaze. He was silent for the longest time, turning over the words and deciding not to say them. There were no excuses I would accept tonight. Not after I had thrown away the best goddamn thing I’d ever had because of his stupid yapping.
We’d been so busy joking about who Silas was dating from Damon’s team that it had never crossed our minds to look elsewhere. The only games he went to were those when the Titans played against the Breakers. He was there for Nick, knowing all along that I was there for Damon.