Page 66 of Built to Fall
Of course it was Delaney.She’s a goddamn blabbermouth.
I finally look up, jaw tight. “We talked. That’s it.”
Savannah raises a perfectly plucked brow, swinging one leg over the other. “So you’re offering girls your bed now? Out of the kindness of your heart?”
Savannah may have gotten the details of Lina and my talk at the Union, but she has no idea aboutthe incidentduring Lina’s run.
The one that keeps me up at night and wakes me up early in the morning, because all I can think about is whether Lina is outrunning again. Sometimes I even go out driving, looking for her. All because I’m paranoid of it happening again.
“You should know, Sav. You saw it firsthand when you showed up at five in the morning.”
Her smile falters. “I wasn’t trying to interrupt anything, I swear. If you want to start something serious with her, I’m all for it. In fact?—”
“Lina’s not like that,” I cut her off, not because sheneedsto hear it, but because she’s my friend and she deserves the truth.
There’s a flicker of something behind her eyes—sympathy, maybe, because she’s too nice for her own good—and before I can even attempt to place it, it’s replaced with a look I know all too well.
The one she gives me when she wants to forget whatever made her feel something.
She stands up slowly, sauntering toward the bed with that practiced ease she’s perfected over the years. Her fingers trail along the edge of the comforter, her gaze heavy with unspoken challenge.
We’re supposed to be studying. One of her fashion classes required her to make a male couture line. I promised I’d give her my honest opinions as she worked on the designs. It’s way more entertaining than my business homework.
But like most times when Savannah comes over to hang out or do homework, it’s bound to escalate.
“I didn’t come here to talk about Lina,” she says, her voice low, almost a whisper. “But I will say, you’re being a complete idiot.”
I close the lid of my laptop. “Yeah?”
“Yeah, but I can’t exactly complain, because it’s technically working in my favor.” Her shirt is off before I’ve looked all the way up at her. It’s always like this—easy, reckless, safe in all the wrong ways.
Objectively, Savannah Sinclair is a work of art with her platinum blonde hair and gorgeous face. Too independently unique to be classified as the kind you would like to hang on your wall, because you know it was never meant for you.
She’s meant for glass cases, protected with velvet ropes. Meant to be admired but never claimed or touched.
Savannah was never someone I saw a future with. She’s not the art I’m bidding on and trying to take home; she’s the art I’m admiring momentarily at the museum.
And I keep touching, like the fool I am. Thinking maybe if I do it long enough—get a good enough look—it will give me the feeling of something real, but it never does. Not for me. Not for her.
She climbs onto my lap, her lips brushing against mine like a question neither of us ever really asks. And I let her kiss me. I let her pull me under like she always does, because it’s easier than answering things I don’t want to admit.
Her mouth moves down my neck, hands skating under the hem of my shirt. My body reacts before my brain can catch up, falling into familiar rhythms we never talk about afterward.
But just as I drag her closer, just as it’s about to blur into something physical and nothing else, I sense exactly why this feelssowrong.
My mind’s already somewhere else—on Lina, wrapped in that silk robe, eyes tired and sad in a way that made me want to fix everything and nothing, all at once.
I think of her constantly. Worry about her indefinitely.
Maybe it makes me a scumbag for thinking about another girl while Savannah’s grinding down on me, but she knows what this is and exactly what I want from it.
We’rebothdoing this for a distraction.
Us doing this with each other—hooking up like this every so often—started as a distraction from both of our intolerances forcommitment, and somewhere along the way, it became routine. Familiar and easy.
That’s the whole point.
Savannah doesn’t want anything real, and neither do I.
