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CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

I spend the entire morning crying all over Liv while she patiently hands me tissue after tissue. We’ve just torn open a fresh box when Zander’s first phonecall chimes over my sobs.

“Talk to him,” Liv urges.

I silence my phone and toss it across my bed.

“Betts—”

“I can’t talk to him.”

“Why not? He wants to work things out.”

I stifle a groan of frustration. In her defense, making up with Zander is, ostensibly, the easiest way to end my grief.

And since I haven’t explained to her why I broke up with him, she can’t know why getting back together is the last thing I want.

In her eyes, Zander and I had a fight, albeit a bad one.

For the requisite time we’ll sulk and cry, and then we’ll be a couple again, more in love than ever.

A world without Zander-and-Betts is unfathomable to Liv.

It’s still unfathomable to me.

I tell her, “We can’t work things out.”

“Of course you can.”

I push myself up to a sitting position so I can face her eye to teary, swollen eye. “No, we can’t. It’s over. We’re all wrong for each other.”

“Okay, that is so not true.”

She thinks she’s appeasing and reassuring me, but everything she says rubs me the wrong way. “You don’t get it. I don’t want to work things out.”

“Okay, okay.” She’s humoring me, I can tell. She thinks once my anger cools down, I’ll come back to my senses.

Why does no one take me seriously?

“I mean it,” I say, sounding as firm as someone can who’s drowning in misery. “He says he loves me, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t even know me.”

Liv’s eyes widen and her mouth clamps shut.

“He takes me for granted.” I pull at a loose thread on my quilt as I choke on a fresh burst of tears.

“And he acts like he owns me.” It hurts to enumerate his wrongs, especially after I just shouted them at him last night.

But I need to say them again. I need to sear them on my brain, because in all this sadness, I’m already starting to forget why I broke up with him.

“Well, yeah, he can be a little possessive sometimes,” Liv admits.

I wait for the “but…” but she doesn’t add one. Instead, she hugs me and offers me another tissue.

I weep through the rest of the weekend. None of this mourning makes sense.

I was the one who wanted to break up, yet there’s a hole in my heart, a deep sense of loss.

My relationship with Zander was the defining feature of my life for nearly a year.

For most of my time at Brownhill. So yeah, I’m grieving. And it hurts like hell.

Monday and Tuesday I sleepwalk through my daily routine, my mind only half-waking during my classes.

Too brittle to socialize, I text the Clairs a pretty lie: Need to cram for a quiz.

See you all on Thursday . They send back good luck wishes and thumbs-up emojis.

By Wednesday, the numbness wears off and I don’t feel quite so desolate anymore.

My senses reawaken to the taste of food, the warmth of the sun, and the smell of the fresh mountain air.

I even resume project-faerie-wings, finally removing all the old bent and broken wire from their edges.

Zander has tried to call me a few more times, but he never leaves a message.

Nor has he texted me. I have a feeling he’s waiting me out.

He thinks that, yet again, I’ve overreacted and, given time, I’ll come to see reason.

Which I have. With each day that passes I’m more and more certain that breaking up with him was the right thing to do.

Now all I have to do is get through my first Zander-free weekend.

I couldn’t be more grateful that I have plans with the Clairs—plans to spend my time doing new things that interest me, with people who understand me.

All week, Liv has been patient and supportive, but when Friday afternoon stretches into evening, tension builds. Breaking up with Zander has blown up my social routine, leaving Liv to deal with the collateral damage.

In the dining hall, as I arrange my dinner on the table and set aside my tray, I ask her, “So what are you doing tonight?”

She averts her gaze and fidgets with her hair. “Oh, well, you know. The usual.”

“You mean you’re going to O-Chi?”

“Um, yeah.”

“It’s okay, Liv. I don’t think you’re a traitor or anything.”

“I know,” she sighs. “But it’s weird, you know?”

I nod. I do know. Over the course of our friendship, there have been plenty of evenings that she and I have gone our own ways.

We’re not joined at the hip. But since she started ‘seeing’ Braden—or whatever you want to call what they’re doing—going to O-Chi together has become a given.

I know she’s welcome there without me. The brothers and the girls who are regulars all like her and consider her one of them.

But what about Braden? His best friend is no longer going out with her best friend.

Their shoddily built relationship can’t afford to lose its only scaffold.

My throat tightens around my bite of fajita. What am I supposed to do? I can’t stay with Zander just to keep them together.

Even though the old Betts would.

I tell Liv, “I’m sure after all this blows over, I can start going to O-Chi parties again.” Not that I want to, but for her I’d go to one every once in a while.

“Yeah. I know.”

“Are you still going to be Sweetheart?”

Her mouth tugs down at the corners and hurt fills her eyes. “I don’t know. Braden hasn’t said anything more about it.”

Anger sweeps through me, heating my skin until it prickles.

Damn him. No point in committing to having Liv in the frat when he’s reluctant to commit to her himself.

I make up my mind to call Zander this weekend, regardless of the personal risk.

He might be pissed off that I don’t want to talk about getting back together, and he might be unwilling to go to bat for Liv, but I have to try.

She has all the qualities that make for a great Sweetheart.

And none of them have a damn thing to do with Braden.

“So, what are you doing tonight?” she asks me, eager to change the subject.

“Just going over to a friend’s.” I’ve mentioned Avery and Aaron to Liv before, but without giving many details.

To date, Liv knows nothing about my burgeoning interest in witchcraft or my psychic ability.

The Tarot cards and Avery’s gifts only come out of my desk drawer when I have the room to myself.

Maybe I’m underestimating Liv, but I think she’d have a cow if she knew I was dabbling in the occult.

Not that she’s religious or anything, she’s just anti-weird.

“Whose?”

“Avery’s.”

Liv purses her lips. “Leo’s friend?”

I nod.

“So he’s going to be there.” It’s a statement, not a question .

“Yeah. And so is Aaron.” I crumple my napkin and toss it on my mostly clean plate.

She wrinkles her nose. “What do you all do ?”

I give her a casual shrug. “Oh, I dunno, talk mostly. We have a lot of mutual interests.”

“Like what? Trees? ”

I don’t take the bait. “Among other things.”

“Why are you being so secretive?”

“I’m not, am I?”

“Yes,” she scowls. She lets out a breath and her features soften. “If there was something going on between you and Leo, you’d tell me, wouldn’t you?”

“Yeah. But there’s not. We’re just…”

“I know, I know.” Liv rolls her eyes. “You’re just friends.”

“Yep. Just friends.” Technically. I think. Sort of.

“So he’s not the reason you broke up with Zander?”

I’ve been waiting all week for her to ask me this question.

Honestly, I’m impressed it’s taken her this long, considering how suspicious she’s been of Leo since she met him.

I get it. She needs someone to be the bad guy.

Someone to blame for pulling me away from her and Zander and O-Chi.

But the only thing Leo has done is show me what it feels like to be around a guy who respects me.

“I broke up with Zander because he was making me unhappy,” I assure Liv. “Not so I could be with Leo.”

She considers me a moment while I steadily meet her eyes.

“Okay.” She takes one last sip of her water. “It’s freezing in here. Let’s go.”