Page 64 of Bitter Lies

Arching a brow, I give him a snide stare. “Looking at the stars?”

“Right,” he says rudely. “Why?”

“Why not?”

“Because we’re not fucking thirteen anymore. Wishing on stars is stupid,” he says, glancing away with a frown.

I can’t help a caustic laugh at that. “I didn’t say I was wishing on anything. What’s the fucking point?”

“Exactly.” He grimaces, pulling his knee up to his chest from where he’s sitting against the wall.

“Whatever,” I mutter, ignoring the heat I can feel emanating from his body just a few inches from mine.

Of course, with his proximity comes images of what we could do alone up here. Thankfully, I have some restraint because I hardly need to fuck him again, even if my body is loose and heated in anticipation of the pleasure, I know he can give me.

“Remember when Max fell out of the tree?” Griffin rumbles, his mouth quirking up in an uncharacteristic smile.

The sight creates havoc in my system, and I cover the reaction with a hesitant chuckle. “Yeah, I thought for sure he broke something. Always the daredevil trying to be funny.”

Max was horsing around that day, and it only stands out for me because of that. By then, I was so caught up in my confusing feelings for Griffin that I hardly noticed anything outside of the way I tingled in his presence.

If I recall, that’s the day he looked at me with a new twinkle to his eye, and the butterflies became a swarm of bees in my stomach as he settled me into the fort and made sure I was wrapped up tight in a sleeping bag, warm and cozy.

He always did those things, catered to my needs, and it filled my soul in a way I can’t describe all these years later. But maybe even that was a lie—maybe every time he looked at me, it was with the intent of winning a stupid bet, over fifty fucking dollars.

If so, he was fucking diabolical even at thirteen.

We lapse into silence for a while, each lost to our own thoughts until he breaks it suddenly, and I jump beside him. “How did you get it back?”

“Get what back?”

“The necklace. I know you gave it to Bobby. I saw it on his sister’s fucking neck,” Griffin says coldly.

“That’s not possible,” I say. “The only time I didn’t wear it…”

Turning away, because I feel like I’m revealing more vulnerability to the jerk who doesn’t deserve it, I sigh into the universe when he keeps going.

“When?”

“When I had my surgery, for my tonsils. I should go,” I say, pulling myself up and toward the door.

“I saw her wearing it, Halsey.” His insistence makes me pause, while he searches my eyes for what I don’t know. He doesn’t believe my truths because, to him, they’re all lies.

Stopping with a grunt, I turn to him with an impatient stare. “I don’t fucking know, Griffin. Why does it even matter? It could hardly have mattered to you if you were willing to give it to a girl for a bet.”

He runs his hand over his face roughly, hiding his grimace. “Because it doesn’t make sense.”

“Nothing about this makes sense,” I say, stepping up to the ladder and turning around to back down the rungs.

Just before my head disappears from the hole, I stop and say, staring at my hands clenched around the wood. “You know, I thought all this time that maybe I did something wrong. I thought, maybe with time, you’d come to see I was still me, waiting for my friend, but as it turns out, you were nothing but a lie, and I’m nothing but a stupid fucking idiot.”

∞∞∞

The ride home after the break is quiet, each of us clinging to our corners. Griffin and Max sit strained in the front seats, and I wonder once more what’s come between them.

Does Griffin know about the drugs? Or is it something else?

Has their time run its course much like mine did? As I stare between the two, sadly, I don’t know, but I wish it could have been different for us all.

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