Page 11 of A Little Bit Reckless

That was it.

I stopped it before things got too deep, and I tried to before Bru embarrassed himself.

Bru scanned my eyes. “A line crossed is one time, Wells,” he said, and my stomach knotted, tightened. He nodded. “Onetime. More than that is something else.”

Something else.

“You must think I’m stupid,” he said, lifting his eyes to the tiled ceiling. It was a wonder no one else was in here. I wished someone else was in here. He faced me. “But I’m not, and you’re in denial. You’re also failing and need a tutorbecause of thatdenial. Or did you think I hadn’t noticed you stopped going to classes because of me?”

We had all the same classes last semester. I often had classes with my friends.

I didn’t make that mistake this semester. Bru and I had zero classes together.

“You started missing them after what I said,” Bru continued, and the breath punched from my lungs. “You stopped going to classes after I told you I loved you.”

He loved me.

He didn’t love me. He was infatuated with me like many people were once they got a hit. I had a lot of sexual partners I had to give the same talk to. I didn’t do love.

Love didn’t do me.

“Do me a favor and stop this,” I said, backing off him. I shook my head. “Do it before there’s nothing left of our friendship to repair.”

We may not be able to get back to what we were after everything that happened between us, but there’d be no possibility at all if he didn’t stop.

Someone did come in, and, worried it could be Thatcher, I left. I didn’t want to explain any weirdness to him. He was happy.

At least one of us was.

CHAPTER

FIVE

Bru

Bow Reed was on her phone when I approached her. I lifted my hand. “Hey.”

She jumped. Like nearly a foot off the street, she jumped. She was in her running gear like me, her pink jacket zipped up to her neck and her earmuffs on. The holidays had passed, but it was still cold in the spring semester. She gripped her phone through her mittens. “Hi. Sorry. You scared me.”

Clearly. I propped my hands on my waist. “You okay?”

She was kind of jumpy considering she expected me. I was late for our run but only by a few minutes.

Bow slid her phone into her leggings pocket. She’d been standing near a bench on Pembroke University’s quad which was our meeting place for our weekly runs. We didn’t do it as much since spring in the Midwest still got snow on occasion, but we tried to get out of the library when we could.

Bow and I were both a couple of nerds. She was the only person I knew besides me who studied when they didn’t have to. She was brilliant and the little sister of one of my best friends.

She chewed her lip, a flush in her cheeks. She had her curly hair up in a bun and looked like an ad for The North Face with how coordinated and put together she was. She even matched her gray socks to her earmuffs, but that was Bow. She was always polished with rarely a hair out of place. She wrestled with her hands a bit, her smile wobbly. “I’m good.”

“You sure?”

“Mmhmm.” Her face managed to get even redder, but it was cold out. “You ready?”

I was, so I allowed her to lead the way. We picked up our feet, and I knew this would be a nice release.

Especially after yesterday.

I had so much shit going on in my head right now, and it was nice to get a run in with a friend. Thatcher’s sister and I were good buddies. She was the only person I could relate to in regards to school and stuff, and she was just incredibly kind. The exact opposite of ninety percent of the people in our friend group.