Page 97 of Unloved

“No,” I say, cutting him off with a quick shake of my head. “I want to, I’m just— I don’t want you to see me differently.”

The confession is raw as it falls from my lips that still tingle from his kiss.

“Never.”

He smiles, and it’s so blinding it feels like standing in the sun on a warm California beach day. Like home.

CHAPTER 35Ro

“I look ridiculous,” I say quietly, biting down on my lip as I turn slowly side to side in the mirror.

“Let me see.” Sadie’s voice chirps from the video call she’s currently on, though I’ve pointed the camera to the ceiling while I change.

Even at the height of Sadie’s party-girl phase, before Rhys Koteskiy’s appearance in her life, Sadie had always spent Halloween alone with her brothers. All holidays, really, despite my continual offers to accompany her, plan a party, or even to take her back home to California with me.

“Ta-dah,” I mutter, propping the phone up against the mirror and stepping back awkwardly for her to see the whole thing. On my phone screen, Liam flips Sadie’s Wookiee onesie hoodie up—the same costume she wears every year and will continue to don as long as Liam isStar Warsobsessed.

“Hot,” she says. Her intense gray eyes are hard not to shrink from for most people, but Sadie is my best friend. I only find comfort in the icy cold of her gaze.

“The game was good,” I prompt her, checking the red ribbons tied into my long pigtail braids. “Rhys played amazingly.”

She rolls her eyes, but I see the slight tinge of worry in her gaze. “He seemed okay?”

Sadie asks this particular question a lot, and though she won’t tell me everything, she’s confided that he took a really nasty hit on the ice last spring, and sometimes she gets anxious about him skating—specifically if she can’t be there to watch him.

I told her that it was cute how she fretted over him. She faked a grimace and pretended to throw up, but her smile was bright underneath it all.

“He was incredible. Bennett had a shutout.”

“Look at you,” Sadie coos. “Learning all the lingo.”

I giggle a little, relaxing as I balance on one leg to roll up the white stockings to my midthigh. Accompanied by the blue-checkered puff-sleeve dress I’ve owned for years and never figured out how to style, I look like the perfect blend of sweet and sexy.

For the first time in a long time, I feel hot,andI feel like me.

“You sure you’re good to go by yourself?” she asks. Sadie may be the queen of attitude and seeming not to care, but she caresa lot. I know if I told her that I wasn’t okay by myself, she’d call someone to get me or spend herbirthdaywith me instead of her brothers. I’d never take that from her.

“Yeah, I’m gonna Uber. It’s only, like, a five-minute ride. By the way, happy birth—”

“Don’t say it,” she growls. “Or I’m hanging up on you.” Her eyes dart over both shoulders, before she hunkers down farther on her couch and pulls the phone closer. “So, you gonna tell me what’s going on with you and Freddy?”

“Nothing,” I say quickly, but stumble over the word slightly as an image of him flashes in my mind’s eye: heaving breath and whispering praise into my ear as I—

Heat shoots up the back of neck.

“We’re friends.” I clear my throat. “And I’m still his school-assigned tutor until the end of this semester. He’s just… he’s flirty.”

And touchy, I want to add—but I know the conclusions she’lldraw, the connotation behind the words. And it isn’t how I mean them.

Freddy is warmth and sunlight, shining and shimmering across ocean-blue water. The kind you want to bask in. His gaze is like heat on my skin. And he’s always reaching out to touch some part of me—physically affectionate in a way that hasnothingto do with attraction.

He’s the same way with his friends and teammates—a pat on the back or squeeze of a shoulder, tight hugs and body slams after goals, helmet to helmet as he cheers with them. His need for touch even platonically is easy to see, but it’s even easier to imagine him casually intimate with someone he did find attractive, maybe a girlfriend.

A hand on the thigh while driving, kneading circles into skin. Holding hands, always, fidgeting with her fingers on the tabletop as they chat. Or under the table, before slipping up my skirt and pressing into me, until I can’t hold back my—

“Ro?”

I shake my head, trying for the thousandth time to somehow remove the mental image of Matt Fredderic against his bedroom door, freshly bitten lips and shirt rucked upby me, before it destroys every brain cell I have left.

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