Page 99 of Lovesick
Fast-walking over to him—and making sure I don’t trip in my heels—my heart is swinging against my ribs like a killer right hook, determined to slip through the slats and jump into his arms. When I approach him, though, he doesn’t greet me with that patented smile of his.
Not that I expected him to.
I can’t tell if this is some hypnagogic hallucination that’s been curated from my lovelorn heart, but trying to iron out the wrinkles seems as pointless as standing here with my mouth ajar.
Shock inoculates a paralytic agent into my bloodstream. “You showed up.”
The baritone of Crew’s voice is rocky, reminiscent of a growl from an aspirated engine. “Yeah. I tend to keep my promises.”
A dagger to the gut would’ve been a kinder sentence.
Guilt mangles my vocal cords, and my words come out butchered. “I’m so sorry, Crew. For everything I’ve put you through. All of this is my fault. I let my dad get in the way of what we’ve built together, and when you needed me to stand up for you, I didn’t,” I say, my sinuses inflamed like I’ve inhaled a fatal dosage of menthol.
The tears are on standby—waiting to ruin the makeup that I spent an hour working on—but it’s the snarling hurt that cuts me to the core. Hacks notch into bone as a permanent reminder of my irreversible screwup.
Sadness mars his expression, and his body language has shifted completely, as if we’ve reverted back to strangers. I’ve never yearned for his touch more than I do right now.
“I’m sorry for snapping. I just want this to be over. I don’t care about your parents’ permission. I care aboutyou, Princess. But as much as I want us to be together, I don’t want it at the expense of your well-being. From the minute I stepped into your life, I’ve caused nothing but chaos.”
“That’s not true. You’re the least chaotic thing in my life right now, Crew. I need you, okay? I can’t do this without you.”
There are no words to make up for the time we’ve lost on opposite sides of the battlefield. So, being of sound mind and desperate heart, I pitch forward to kiss the one person I’m done staying away from. We fall into a familiar rhythm, unfazed bythe fact that Crew’s teammates are witnessing a turning point in history.
But then, a brusque voice interrupts us immediately. “What the hell is going on here?”
Holy shit. Fuck. Shit. FUCK!
We jerk apart immediately. I don’t need to turn around to know who’s right behind me.
“Dad, I can explain,” I blurt out, inserting myself between him and Crew.
Cowhearted, my stomach is seconds away from revolting all the food I had in the last twenty-four hours, and I have a better chance of running for the hills than trying to plead my case. I’m not going to let Crew take the fall for this. It’s not his fault.
“Mr. Lawson, it?—”
My father’s expression is sullied with rage, those pronounced wrinkles of his no longer bearing a vestige of amicability. “How long?” It’s a growl that comes from the very depths of him—one that forces me into submission.
Neither of us want to answer him.
“How. Long.”
My dad isn’t a man who repeats himself.Ever.
“Since the beginning of school,” I confess, withering like the blackened edges of parchment paper after contacting a flame.
Crew moves me behind him instinctively. He knows that he’s about to get ripped to shreds, but he doesn’t care. He protects me just like he always has—even if it’s from my own father.
“Jesus Christ.”
“It was my idea, sir. I was the one who wanted to keep it a secret from you. Merit is innocent in all of this,” Crew claims, attempting to wrangle the situation with a full-hearted mediation.
“That’s not true!” I shout, trying to poke my head into theconversation, though to little avail given Crew’s impassable defenses and equally impassable stance.
I’m lucky that all his teammates seem to be too engrossed in their own conversations to eavesdrop on ours.
“I told you to stay away from my daughter, and you went behind my back,” my father snaps. “Then you both continued to lie to me for months.”
My pulse cartwheels as heat waves float up to my forehead and play with my already-spotty vision. “I’m so sorry, Dad.”
