Page 96 of Built to Fall
It’s advice I should be giving to myself, in all honesty.
We stand there like that for a long time, her breathing shaky against me, my heart beating steady for the both of us.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
LINA
Once my breakdown fades, and I realize I’m standing in the entryway of Grant’s apartment as he keeps his arms tightly wrapped around me, embarrassment I rarely ever feel sets in.
The longer I stand here with him, the more I pick up on his continual movements. How every so often his hands trail up and down in a comforting motion, and how after that, he threads one of his hands through my hair, smoothing his fingers down the back of my head.
It dawns on me how utterly obvious it is that he has two sisters. No man would be able to comfort someone so seamlessly without the right amount of training—the type IknowAbby and Claire both instilled in him.
Behind the jock athlete who puts on the front of an asshole playboy stands a man who grew up drawing circles and elements from the periodic table on his sisters’ backs and wiping their tears gently from their cheeks.
The desire to cry is something I want completely cleared from my mind. And now that I’ve realized how embarrassing it is that I cried in myfriend with a lowercase f’s arms, it’s become a foreign entity, and my eyes have dried completely.
When I pull slightly away from him, no longer soaking the fabric of his sweatshirt, he glances down at me.
And just like that, I’m undone all over again.
Because it’s not fair, really. It’s not fair that he gets to look at me like I’m something precious when every cell in my body is already warring against feeling too much.
I wish I could resist him.God,I wish I could.
I wish I could see him for what he so desperately wants everyone else to—the cocky, too-good-looking-for-his-own-good fuckboy who doesn’t take anything seriously, least of all a girl’s heart.
I wish I could tuck myself back into the version of him that’s easier to hate. Easier to survive. Easier to leave.
But standing here, wrapped in his arms, breathing in the scent of laundry detergent and worn cotton andhim,I know better.
I know the truth. The one he keeps hidden behind bad jokes and cocky smirks and the gleam of more in his eyes.
I know the boy who learned tenderness before he learned detachment. The boy who knows how to catch someone when they fall because he’s done it a hundred times before. The boy who holds me like I’m not a burden.
Like I’m something he’s proud to carry.
And it wrecks me.
“I wish you were mean to me,” I find myself telling him, against every other instinct I have.
“Yeah?” Grant almost laughs, like he thinks I’m kidding.
I swallow around the lump in my throat. “Yeah.”
“Why is that?”
“I know we’re friends, and I’m glad, but it felt easierbefore—when I thought you were being an asshole.”
Then I could be infuriated with him, just like I momentarily was when we first met.
I could shove him into a box labeled“mistake”and tape it up tight and never look back.
Instead, he stands here, holding me like I’m something breakable.
“I get it—I do—but Lina, I never meant to be mean to you,” he says, barely above a whisper.
“I know, I know. You told me I was too pretty to be at Yale. I took it as an insult and overreacted.”
