Page 96 of Never Will I Ever

In the end, I don’t say anything at all. I can’t bring myself to confirm or deny it.

Unfortunately, Cole seems to take my silence as confirmation enough.

“What happens when you leave here? He’s still kicked out of school. Your friends still hate his guts.”

Leave it to my brother to force the questions I’d been asking myself out in the open, only for me to realize I still don’t have an answer. And I finally understand what Avery meant on the dock that night. What it truly means to struggle with the internal battle of wanting something but hating yourself for wanting it.

For fearing what it might mean if you actually let yourself have it.

“I don’t know.” My head sinks to my hands, and I rake my fingers haphazardly through my hair. “I wish I did, but…”

Fuck.

This has become more complicated than I could’ve everanticipated, and no path before me seems like the one I should take. Ending things when we leave here, continuing to hide whatever this is like a dirty little secret, coming clean to everyone…they all feel like betrayal, in one way or another. If not to Keene or my morals, then to Avery.

To my heart.

“Well, you’ve always been yourself, and you’ve always stood up for the right thing,” Cole says as he kicks a few stray pine needles off the step with his socked foot. “You know, that’s one of the reasons you’re my biggest role model.”

His words hit me in the chest.

Sure, I’ve always felt a little closer to Cole despite our age difference, but I hadn’t realized he would look up to me with such high esteem until…Family Day.

He was there, sitting in the stands, when Keene and Aspen were outed. And it wasn’t until later than night, after he pulled me to the side and told me he’s afraid something like that will happen to him one day, that it hit me.

And it was Colton’s fear that ultimately led me to Coach’s office. Led me to turning Avery in.

Just the reminder has my throat constricting a bit when I choke out a soft, “I know, Cole.”

He’s quiet for a few heartbeats before he rises from his spot beside me and fires a bullet straight at my chest.

“What you’re doing makes me think I shouldn’t look up to you anymore.”

I take in a sharp breath, disarmed by his evident disappointment as he walks toward the cabin door.

“Cole, I’m still the same person I was yesterday, last month, or a year ago,” I call after him. “This doesn’t change that.”

So much for not lying to him.

The person I am right now is nothing like the Kaleb who stepped into Colin’s office, only to find Avery sitting in the chairacross from him. I’m nothing like the Kaleb who tried to get him kicked out simply because I couldn’t handle the feelings he’d started pulling out of me the moment I saw him.

But at some point, I truly started to leave the past in the past. Started giving Avery the benefit of the doubt, allowing him to prove himself. And by pushing my own personal issues to the side…I finally got to see the person he really is. The one, deep down, I knew was there all along.

Though, from the look on my brother’s face, that doesn’t matter. If anything, he looks even more despondent as he pulls open the door and walks inside, only to turn and whisper one last parting thought.

“Like I said. You don’t have to lie to me.”

When the door clicks shut, I let out a long sigh and drag myself off the cabin porch.

I’m barely a hundred yards from the cabin, barely starting to process the conversation Colton and I had, when a familiar voice calls out from somewhere down the moonlit path.

“Hey, hey. There you are.”

Turning, I find Avery closing the few yards between us. There’s a devastating smile on his lips as he approaches, but his brows crash together, those sky blues taking on a hint of worry when he gets a better look at my face.

“Is everything okay?”

Not even close.

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