Page 47 of Not a Friend (Crescent Light #1)

A slap to the face, that’s what it was. A gut punch. Sure, we were never really together, but at one point, he was an important person in my life. He was still—until ten seconds before—important to me. I thought I was important to him, too.

That’s what you get.

Tears welled and spilled as I stared at him, frozen in place. He stared back at me silently, his eyes tracking my tears as they rolled down my cheek. A flicker of something like regret peeked through the hurt in his deep blue eyes.

I turned on my heel.

“Oli, wait—” He attempted a step toward me, but I was too quick as I stepped into the hall and slammed the door.

I drove back to Boston in complete silence. Once frantic thoughts slowed to a crawl, then stopped altogether after seeing Nate’s anger—the hurt in his eyes. I felt hollow. Empty. So devoid of energy that even my self-loathing took a break .

Back at my apartment, my feet led me straight to my bed, which was still unmade from when I was down with my migraine.

How was that only two days ago?

Sleep tugged at the corners of my mind, but as I curled under the thick blankets, I caught a whiff of a familiar scent. It was somewhere. Everywhere.

I sat up, pulled the ends of my hair under my nose, and sniffed. Nate. His cologne, his apartment, his laundry, him . The collar of my T-shirt? Nate. It tangled my hair as I pulled it over my head and tossed it across the room.

The tiny purple mark over my left breast? That was Nate, too.

Ignoring the stinging in my eyes, I threw back the blankets and trudged to the bathroom.

He was in my skin, the aching muscles of my body.

Steam bloomed on the vanity mirror once I twisted the lever to a hellish level, desperate to wash him away.

I stripped the rest of my clothes and shoved them deep into the bottom of my overflowing hamper.

When I returned to my bedroom to grab the discarded shirt off the floor, I paused.

As much as I wanted to wash Nate Cassidy off my skin, out of my hair, I—for whatever reason—pressed the fabric to my face and inhaled deeply one last time. Forgetting him was going to be impossible; I knew that. I’d tried before, and it didn’t work. But still, I wished I could.

It’d been two years since the last time we were together.

Two years, but I still remembered every detail.

And last night was… different. It was the first time I’d truly connected with someone since…

well, him. It was like reigniting the embers of a twin flame.

Like curling into your bed after a long, hard day.

It only made our fight feel that much worse.

Stepping under the water, I let the steam fill my lungs .

The shower acted as a catalyst for turning off my emotional brain and switching to my logical one. Everything was clearer when thought about in a shower.

I focused on what I knew instead of what I felt for once, and the facts of the matter were straightforward. Blatantly obvious.

I wasn’t in a good place mentally; I didn’t take the time to think things through, and I acted purely based on emotions. All sense of self-preservation and reason was dust in the wind. Now, I was paying the price for it.

Here’s what I know.

1. Kieran assumed we weren’t exclusive. I assumed we were. Things with Kieran are over.

2. I should have come home after I left Kieran’s. I didn’t.

3. If there was any chance of having a friendship with Nate, or even being indifferent acquaintances, that was long gone.

Any lingering embers of feeling for him were snuffed out. They had to be. I would make them. Sleeping together—no matter how willing we were—was a mistake of massive proportions because he was still Nate, and I was still me.

And now there was nothing.

4. He called me a hypocrite. He isn’t wrong.

As pissed as I was, hurt and cut to the core by his words, there were a few that rang louder than all the others.

Some because I knew they were true. “You’re a hypocrite, Olive.”

Others because I knew they weren’t. “I’m not your friend. I’ve never been your fucking friend.”

This morning was the first time I’d heard him say anything that resembled ever having real feelings for me. The first time I’d heard a semblance of truth from him. Real, raw, vulnerable, honest truth .

And I was so fucking pissed about it.

I may have regretted some of my actions, some of my words, but I was glad I called him out on that part. Glad I told him he should have said all of that long ago, because he damn well should have.

Maybe things could have been different.

Who knows what could have been, what might have become of us if he’d just… if he’d just talked to me. If he would’ve opened his mouth instead of writing everything down and had a real conversation.

He doesn’t get to put this on me. He doesn’t get to act like the heartbroken one.

He doesn’t get to make me play the guessing game for over a year and blame me when I didn’t want to play anymore.

He sure as hell doesn’t get to make me feel bad about it now.

“I’m not your friend,” he’d said. “I’ve never been your fucking friend.”

Message received. Loud and clear.