Page 32 of Forced to Share
I huffed, finally letting go of Jeremy. “I didn’t do anything. She dared us and then got mad when she didn’t like what she saw.”
Mom raised her eyebrows, I got where she was coming from. Leah’s hurt was fresh, and here I was kissing her ex right in front of her. The smart thing would have been to refuse. I obviously wasn’t very smart when it came to Jeremy Praytor.
I grabbed Jeremy’s hand, not missing the way my mother watched us as I dragged him behind me up the stairs. The closer we got to Leah’s room, the tenser he grew. Maybe he’d been all talk after all. It was a huge deal to tell her about our past. Not to mention what we’d been up to the last couple of days since their split.
Leah had a right to be mad. I’d hidden this from her, much like she’d hidden Jeremy from me. It didn’t make it right, and we weren’t the siblings who did vindictive crap like that to each other.
We stood outside the door for a moment, my hand still tightly clutched in Jeremy’s. I leaned in close because we needed to discuss what we were going to say. How much she needed to know outside of the fact that he was the guy who broke my heart three years ago.
Chapter 22
Jeremy
Austin practically vibrated with nerves, but I had a feeling I knew why he was hesitating. This was a huge step for me. There was a big chance that Leah would never forgive us for what we’d done the last few days. This was a spur of the moment decision on my part and we’d come up there with no plan.
“I’m—I’m okay with telling her whatever you want to. It’s Christmas, and I’d hate to cause more issues with your family. I think I’ve already pissed them off enough.”
Austin huffed out a laugh, pulling me in closer, placing a soft kiss on my cheek. Maybe it was meant to be reassuring, but the move only made me more tense.
“We’ll play it by ear. If she starts to get too mad, we’ll leave it in the past. We can tell her the rest later. It’s not ideal, because she’ll still be pissed later, but you're right that maybe we shouldn’t completely fuck up the holiday.”
When we both finally worked up the guts to knock on the door, we did it at the same time. That way, neither of us had the opportunity to chicken out.
The door swung wide, Leah standing there, her makeup smudged again as she folded her arms over her chest and glared.
“What do you guys want?”
I closed my eyes, swallowing hard, my mouth and throat suddenly too dry to form a coherent sentence. The best part of it was that I didn’t have to. Austin was there to save the day. He knew his sister far better than anyone else and how to keep this situation as calm as possible.
“Can we talk for a second?”
She rolled her eyes. “I think it’s a little too late. What the hell was that? What aren’t you telling me, Austin?”
He sighed, running a hand down his face. “That’s what we need to talk to you about. This took us just as much by surprise as it did you.”
That had Leah’s attention, as she stepped aside to let us into her room. The necklace that I’d gotten her, that she’d put on so happily that morning, was now sitting on topof her dresser. Not that I could blame her, she had to be feeling betrayed by what she saw.
“I didn’t think you two would actually do it. Yes, I pressured you, but that wasn’t just any quick kiss...” Leah collapsed onto her bed, flopped onto her back while she stared up at the ceiling.
“That’s because, before you even brought him here, Jeremy and I had met before.”
Leah sat up and looked between us, her eyes wide.
“What do you mean?”
My heart slammed into my ribcage as I still struggled to swallow. There was no way around this, it wasn’t fair to make Austin do all the talking.
“I transferred to NYU.”
Leah nodded enthusiastically. She’d known that because she’d helped me move into the dorms. This was another sign of just how terrible a couple we really were, because I never told her where I’d transferred from.
“I know, kind of hard to forget some of those details when I had eyes for you right from the start.”
That had me blushing, but I needed to keep the conversation on track.
“What I’d never said was that I’d come to New York from San Francisco. UC Berkeley, to be exact.”
You could see the moment the light bulb clicked on. I didn’t think it was possible for Leah’s eyes to get any wider, but they did. She jumped from the bed, the next thing I knew, she was punching me in the shoulder.
