Page 48 of Deception
“Don’t even try,” Lex says and smiles. “There’s no reason she would have. They were her diaries, after all. She never expected others to read them.”
“What’d she write?”
Vicky never told him what she thought of him in bed, and it gnaws at him. Especially since Lex knows and shouldn’t. He also wants to know how badly Autumn will react when Lex inevitably tells her.
Shrugging, Lex continues to pick the pepperoni from the pizza. Not eating the crust would normally drive Rocco insane, but he’s too distracted by the knowledge that Lex knows he cheated on Autumn with Vicky in high school.
“Wait, how long have you known?”
“Since Lane’s funeral. Felicity showed me something else Vicky wrote, and I read about your sexual encounter. There’s another Drifter from our class she was with. Gave him an incredibly favorable critique.”
“F-Felicity knows, too?”
“It’d be kind of hard for her not to when she’s read them.”
His stomach drops. “How many people know?”
“Enough,” Colt says, his tone angry. “Lex could have completely ruined you over a year ago, but she didn’t. Now, I think you owe her an apology for calling her a bitch.”
“Why didn’t you?” Rocco asks, no longer caring about his best friend.
Lex stares at him and sighs. “Because it would devastate Autumn. Felicity wanted to tell her, but I said to leave it in the past. There’s no reason she needs to know now.”
“What do you need to keep this to yourself?”
Whatever she says, he’ll do. Hell, he’ll find a way to lasso the moon and bring it to her if that’s what she wants. Whatever it takes to keep her mouth shut, he’ll do it.
“I’ve already kept it to myself,” she says. “I have no intention of telling her. The last thing I want to do is to be the person who tells her she settled for nothing.”
“Settled?”
She licks the grease from her fingers and stares at him. “You both have. But it’s your relationship.”
“If you two were still friends, and she came to you for advice about what to do because she’s unhappy with our relationship, what would you tell her?”
Rocco doesn’t know why he wants to know. Lex’s opinion hasn’t mattered to him in years, but he can’t stop himself. He needs to hear what she has to say.
“I’d tell her that she needs to follow her heart. My opinion got her pissed at me. She didn’t tell me when she earned herself a stalker, and then he almost killed Colt. You can say I learned my lesson with her.”
“I’m sorry I called you a bitch.”
Laughing, she wipes her hands and stands. “No, you’re not. But I’ll take it.”
“Thanks for being willing to try,” he says honestly and stands. “Sorry it didn’t work out.”
“At least we’re putting forth the effort. If she still pushes away, we know we did what we could.”
“Yeah, that’s true.”
He walks them to the door, and Lex turns to look at him. “If she asks, can you tell her that I miss my friend? I know we can’t go back, but I’d like to try and move forward. There’s too much history to just throw away.”
Nodding, Rocco sighs. “I will.”
The couple leaves, and he can’t help but feel unsettled. Not because Lex knows about Vicky but because he feels maybe his view on things has been wrong for years. Worse, he realizes that maybe Lex isn’t as terrible as he made her out to be.
“Damn it,” he mutters and begins to clean up the pizza.
Chapter Sixteen
