Page 18 of The Love Dare
Somewhere on the way over, her elated high turns into a wild delirium. She decides right then and there it’s time to come clean. They don’t have a class together next semester. If she doesn’t do it now, she’ll lose him to hockey and to school. She’ll never have another chance like this. And there’s something there. She knows it. She can feel it in the way he looks at her, theway he treats her, as if she’s worth so much more than anyone has ever believed.
Just as she’s about to knock on the door, she hears voices. Winnie swallows, a sudden pit in the back of her throat, and pauses.
“Dude. Come on.”
“What?” Her stomach flips at the familiar sound of his voice.
“She’s here all the time.”
“She was helping me with a class.”
Winnie sucks in a sharp breath. Are they talking about her? She leans toward the open window, listening intently.
“Is that what you told Rusu?”
“It’s the truth.”
An amused snort fills the silence.
“She’s his little sister,” Tyler continues, his voice more forceful than usual. “I would never do that to him. Never. He trusts me.”
She drops her arm.
Never.
That word plays on repeat.
Never.
Never.
She takes a step back. Her foot slips on a patch of ice and she turns to steady herself on the stairs. Then she runs. Back to her dorm. Back to her bed. Back to her books where everything always turns out okay. And she makes a new decision—surer than she’s ever been of anything in her entire life.
She’s done.
Done hanging on his every word. Done reading into those subtle touches. Done fantasizing about the twinkle he sometimes gets when he looks at her. Done waiting for him to make a move. Done wondering. Done questioning. Done livingher life in his orbit. Done getting her hopes up, time and time again, only for life to throw them back in her face.
To Tyler, she will only ever be Alex’s little sister.
That’s never going to change.
Never.
So she opens her laptop and researches how to transfer to NYU, the dream school she didn’t let herself apply to, because it was so far and so foreign and so fearsome, and she was too worried she wouldn’t be able to say no if she actually got in.
Right now, New York is exactly what she needs.
CHAPTER SIX
tyler
6 YEARS BEFORE FILMING
Stop being such a little bitch.
Tyler stands before the front door of the Rusu mansion, rubs his sweaty palms over his jeans, and straightens his shoulders. It’s time to come clean. He hasn’t been able to think about anything else all semester, and now it’s leaking into his game. For the first time in his life, he got benched, all because he couldn’t get McKinny’s words out of his head.
Is that what you told Rusu?
