Page 116 of Never Will I Ever

Perceptive, this one.

All thoughts of stretching or pre-game prep are gone, both for me and for my teammate, who is silently waiting for me to drop the truth-bomb capable of ending our friendship. I rub the back of my neck and send up a silent prayer to whoever may listen that it won’t happen.

“We…slept together.”

Steeling myself for the worst, I glance up to find my teammate gawking at me like I’d just told him flying monkeys exist outside the fictional land of Oz.

“You’re joking.”

My teeth sink into the side of my cheek as I shake my head.

There’s a beat of silence while he continues staring at me before he lets out a little laugh. “I’m sorry, but you’re gonna have to spell this out. You slept with him, or yousleptwith him?”

“Both, technically,” I mutter, the words coming out with as much misery as I’m feeling. The problem is, I’m not sure which part of it hurts more: still wanting Avery, knowing I shouldn’t, or the thought of losing one of my friends because of it. A friend who has every right to hate my guts for the admission I just made.

A friend who is…fuckinglaughingat me like a goddamn lunatic.

“Sorry, I just…” He pauses, clearly still processing, before another laugh slips out. “I don’t mean to laugh. I think I might be in shock.”

“That I could betray your friendship so spectacularly?” I ask dryly.

“No, that I didn’t realize you were into guys.”

An ironic statement, coming from him, but it’s enough to pull the smallest smirk out of me. I wasn’t expecting that to be the thing he’d focus on.

“It wasn’t a secret. My family knows, so do all my friends back home. It just wasn’t something that I’ve been super loud about since coming to college.”

He nods a couple times, and it only makes me feel like even more of a dick that he didn’t know, considering all that’s happened. At least he doesn’t seem perturbed by it, though, snapping his fingers and pointing at me like he just solved an advanced algebra equation.

“You know, now that you mention it, I think I remember seeing you acting all chummy with a guy a few times on campus last year. I just assumed he was a good friend.”

“Chummy?” I echo with a sharp laugh. “And you know what they say about assuming.”

“Yeah, yeah, you’re right. Makes an ass outta both of us,” he says through his chuckles, waving me off. His expression sobers a bit, and he gives me a contemplative nod. “Well, now it makes so much more sense why you turned him in after Family Night.”

“Apart from it being the right thing to do, you mean?”

“Well, sure. Though it’s a little more nuanced than that now, don’t you think?”

I glance up to find his lips twitch into something of a smile, but not quite reaching it. A massive wave of guilt hits me like a linedrive to the chest, and I damn near rub my sternum from the ache it causes.

“I’m really sorry, man. I know it was a shitty thing for me to do, especially knowing what he put you and Aspen through.” More guilt eats at my thoughts, and I drop my eyes to the grass beneath me. “He showed up at camp to follow through on this asinine plan his father thought up, and I was pissed. I wanted nothing to do with him.

“For the first few weeks, both of us were drowning in tension, barely hanging on to our sanity, and it was screwing up our ability to work together. So we did what we had to do and…buried the hatchet.” My throat constricts from the memory of a lamp-lit dock and secret notes swimming to the surface, and I whisper, “The last thing I planned on happening was us falling into bed together.”

Keene’s silent for a brief moment, and I don’t have the balls to look up at him. To witness whatever betrayal or fury is sure to be present in his features.

“Yeah, well, if I’ve learned anything recently, it’s that you don’t get to plan who you fall in love with.”

My blood freezes in my veins, and my eyes snap up to find him watching me with meticulous scrutiny.

“Why do you—”

“Oh, no. We’re not playing this shit off,” he cuts in with ashake of his head. “You’ve been cagey and depressed since the semester started, and I’ve been trying to figure out why. But the answer was written all over your face the second you said his name.”

Well, shit.

“That doesn’t mean I’m in love with him,” I immediately negate.

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