Page 24 of If You Dare

A smile flickers across his face, lighting a candle in my chest. “All right, well, I’m not much of a storyteller, but I’ll give it my best shot.” He bends a knee and rests his arm on it. “I dated this girl all through high school. Head over heels, thought we’d get married.”

Stupidly, my heart sinks. I picture a model who was probably also an athlete and smart and funny and everything I’m not. He’s already been in love before. So in love, he thought he’d marry her someday. He’ll probably never love anyone like that again, let alone me. If his life turns out anything like the books I read, he’ll get his happily ever after with her. Not me.

“We graduated and went to different colleges. I didn’t even blink. We were rock-solid. Plus, we were only two hours apart. We could visit each other every weekend. Talk every night. No big deal.” He shifts, growing more uncomfortable with the memories, but I’m relieved he keeps going, eager to learn as much about him as I can. “First semester, she starts acting differently. I go from waiting an hour between texts to not hearing from her until the next day. Stops returning my missed calls and then stops answering my calls altogether. Acts like I’m bothering her when I do manage to get a text back. She said I was smothering her. I figured it was the distance and we just needed to spend some time together again. How am I doing so far?”

I nod, hanging on to every word. “Good. I definitely want to hear what happens next.”

He manages a smile. “So I show up at her campus to surprise her. Get a couple of her friends to help me out. Her roommate lets me borrow her card to open the door, and when I walk in and flick on the light, my girlfriend’s riding some other guy in her bed.”

My hand flies to my mouth too late to cover the gasp.

Wes lets out a humorless laugh. “It was almost fucking funny, watching her eyes bug out of her head when she realized it was me. She yelled my name, and that motherfucker was still inside her when he said, ‘That your boyfriend?’”

“That’s awful,” I whisper. I can’t even imagine how he must’ve felt. How that kind of betrayal would shape you, change you. Now I know why Chloe told me her brother doesn’t date.

“I beat that motherfucker to a pulp. Made sure she wouldn’t get any use of his dick, tongue, or fingers for weeks.”

Knowing Wes is capable of that much violence sends a shock of fear down my spine. But there’s something else mixed with the fear.

Excitement.

That same excitement I felt when Wes sent his opponent tumbling to the ice during the hockey game.

My thighs clench, imagining that aggression directed at me. His hand around my throat, anger in his eyes while he fucks me into the mattress.

I shake the images away, ashamed. What the hell is wrong with me? I should want someone who treats me like a queen. Who’s gentle and kind. Not someone who’s jealous and possessive and beats the shit out of a guy just so I can’t fuck him again.

Wes is unhinged. But I’m more unhinged for liking that about him.

“How’d I do?” he asks. “Decent story?”

“I’m sorry that happened to you.”

He shrugs. “So why have you never had a boyfriend?”

“I thought that was obvious,” I say. Wes frowns, tilting his head and waiting for me to continue. “You said I’m a loser who should only date nerds from the library. I guess I just haven’t found the right one yet.”

“I never said you were a loser. You’re gorgeous and sweet and smart. You could date any guy.”

The compliments throw me off so completely, I can’t formulate a response. Wes Novak thinksI’mgorgeous?

But that doesn’t matter because he had his heart so thoroughly broken by his first love, he’s determined to never love again. That much is clear.

“So why did you say I should date a nerd from the library?” I ask.

“Wasn’t meant to be an insult. I figured you’d want to date a guy who’s like you. Reads books. Writes. A nice guy who will treat you right.”

I shrug. He’s not wrong, exactly. That is the exact type of man I’ve always fantasized about meeting and falling in love with. The type of man I write about in my stories.

“You can’t tell me no guy’s ever been into you.” A lopsided smirk that gets my heart fluttering. “I refuse to believe it.”

“I thought one boy liked me in ninth grade,” I admit. The memory makes me cringe, but it’s nothing worse than what Wes went through, so I keep going. “He was really nice, said all the right things. He even sat with me during lunch a few times. I usually sat by myself and read a book, so it was nice having someone to talk to for once, especially a cute guy. I even shared some of my stories with him.” I swallow and squeeze my eyes shut like I might block out the memories flashing through my mind, but they’re engraved in my brain. “I wrote a new story the night before that I was really proud of, so instead of waiting to see him in class, I went to meet him at his locker before homeroom. He and his friends had their backs to me, so they didn’t notice me standing right behind them. But I stopped when I overheard him reading one of my stories out loud to his friends. They were all laughing, even him. It’s stupid, but I spent an hour crying in the bathroom after that and never let anyone read anything I wrote again.”

My heart is pounding at simply reliving the memory. Even years later, I can hear the words from my story in Randall’s mocking voice. Words I poured my heart and soul into. Words I believed in.

He was the first person I trusted with them, and he crushed them into dust. I don’t know how I’ll ever let anyone read anything I’ve written again. How I’ll fulfill my dream of becoming an author if I’m terrified about how people may read my words and twist them into something ugly. How I’ll be able to bare my soul like that to anyone again.

“That kid was a dick,” Wes says simply. “Definitely the kind of asshole who’d fuck another guy’s girlfriend.”

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