Page 64 of The Girlfriend Agreement (Conwick U #1)

Logro resistirlo todo, salvo la tentación - I manage to resist everything, except temptation

Translation: We all eventually give in to our desires…and I am no exception.

The silence is oppressive as I lead Blondie down the long, empty corridor, Xolo striding alongside us, and a rush of heat burning under my skin that sets my entire body aflame.

I can’t explain how or what, but it feels like something has shifted between us since this morning, since that awkward plane ride with my parents.

We were both acting—putting on the necessary show—I know that, but there was also truth behind each of our words, I’m sure of it. There was certainly truth to mine.

Or maybe I’m wrong and nothing has changed at all, and it’s just my own deepening feelings I notice, now that I’m actually aware of them.

Since Halloween, those feelings—and her —are all I seem able to focus on, her presence a constant weight around me, heavier than the thickest humidity, depriving me of oxygen.

Of sense.

This feeling…this was exactly why I came up with the No Repeat rule, why I distanced myself from romantic attachment.

From any attachment at all. Because this—whatever this is—it threatens everything I pretend to be.

It threatens to dislodge the mask that serves as a shield to protect the shredded remains of my heart.

I thought I could keep up the ruse. I thought I could keep that needed distance between us, and maybe, with anyone else, I could have.

But Blondie isn’t just anyone, and I realize now I was just fooling myself thinking I wouldn’t end up liking her. It was stupid of me to think for one second that I would make it out of this arrangement without getting attached.

This is exactly why I didn’t want to get to know her. Part of me was smart enough to understand if I did—if I allowed myself to get close to her—it would be impossible not to feel something. And I do.

I feel everything.

I can’t help wondering…when did this actually stop feeling fake for me and start feeling like something real?

Something I would actually want? The Breakers, maybe—when we kissed for my Instagram post?

Or was it even sooner—maybe even that kiss in my car?

I wrack my brain, but I can’t pinpoint the exact moment it happened, and the more I try, the more I think I was down bad for her before I even knew I liked her at all.

And when she kissed me the other day in the library…

I think that was when it really began to sink in—not consciously, but enough to get the wheels turning until Halloween sent that train full steam ahead.

And now? Well, now, I’m fucked. I thought I could put a boundary in place, keep things non-physical and emotion-free between us, but seeing her here?

With my family, my abuela embracing her without question or reservation?

It’s shaping a future I never dared to imagine because I could never bring myself to picture a future without Jamie in it.

I struggle to still, but…for the first time since he died, a bright golden light is starting to break into the unforgiving gloom of my world, and I find that I want to envision it—what that future might actually look like.

And in every version of it, I see Blondie.

“Earlier,” she begins, breaking the silence that separates us as we walk down the hallway.

My fingers curl instinctively at the soothing cadence of her voice, and it takes all my self-restraint to keep from pulling her to me, from running those fingers through her wild curls.

It would be a bad idea. I told her as much.

But that doesn’t mean the temptation isn’t there.

The flames broiling in my chest burn hotter as I force myself to look at her.

She analyzes my face, like my guarded expression is a math equation waiting to be solved, and her teeth roll over her bottom lip, her gaze considering. Contemplative. As if she’s not sure if she should ask the unspoken question pressing at the seam of her lips.

“Just before we left the house,” she continues with a decisive breath, “I noticed a little boy in some of the pictures on your abuelo’s ofrenda.”

An icy shiver douses that fire in my veins, like a bucket of water has been tipped over my head. My skin pimples, the hairs on my arms and the back of my neck going rigid, standing on end, rising in protest of this topic.

Only forty-eight hours ago, it felt too soon. To tell her about this. For me to be emotionally ready to voice it. But I can’t avoid it forever—not anymore. And knowing what I know about her now, about her mom…it wouldn’t be fair to.

It’s time. Not to get over it—I don’t think that will ever be possible—but to accept that what happened…happened. To no longer treat it as something taboo, never to be spoken about or thought of outside of one day a year, like my parents seem so intent on doing. But to talk about it.

To acknowledge my pain with someone who will actually listen.

“I considered that he could maybe be a cousin,” Blondie murmurs in a gentle voice before I can find the courage to speak.

She casts a wary look at me out of the corner of her eye as we continue our sluggish advance through the hallway.

“But…judging from how we’re the only ones here, and there weren’t any other family members in those photographs, I’m guessing not. ”

“Jamie,” I croak, his name foreign and strange in my mouth, as if my tongue can’t comprehend or comfortably form the syllables anymore. When was the last time I actually allowed myself to say it out loud? “My younger brother.”

The fire that occupies my chest vacates the premises to move up into my eyes, which burn now without mercy. Four years of pain stored up, ready to unleash in one blistering moment. I dip my gaze so Blondie won’t see the tears.

“I didn’t know you have a brother.” Her tone is careful, even though we both know she’s smart enough, perceptive enough, to deduce the truth. She just doesn’t want to be the first to say it, perhaps because it’s too close to home—too close to what might lie in wait in her own future.

“Had.”

Blondie’s stride falters at my strangled exhale, and Xolo pauses when I stop walking as well, his large eyes fixed on us, tail wagging, completely oblivious to the tragedy encompassed in that single word.

She remains stock-still, not meeting my gaze, and for a weighted beat, we just stand there in the middle of the corridor with Xolo wedged between our legs, unwilling—or maybe unable—to speak.

It’s not too late, a voice says in the back of my head. You could put an end to this conversation before it begins. You don’t need to say anything else.

But then my eyes drift to Blondie’s as if pulled there by gravity, and the devastated look on her face makes me realize I do.

The wall we’ve both built up between us has never been thinner or more fragile than it is right now.

One word—that’s all it would take. One more word and I could knock it down, leave all the lies and omissions in the past, and let her see the me I keep locked away from the world because that is the only way I feel safe.

It’s a leap I still don’t know if I’m ready to take, but I also know that if I don’t, if I yield to cowardice now, I might not get another chance to be real with her…

or with myself. And if I back away? If I lie?

I would be doing the exact thing Ronnie warned me against. Isn’t that what she said?

That if I fuck this up, Blondie might not be able to put her faith in anyone ever again? Especially me.

Is that a risk I’m willing to take now that I know how I feel?

She hasn’t outright said it, but I can tell Blondie’s feelings toward me have changed—maybe not to the extent mine have (or in the same direction), but I’ve managed to come back from her hating me, which is something.

Though it’s been brief, now that I’ve caught a glimpse of what she’s like behind that loathing, I realize her hatred was a wasteland.

And I don’t ever want to go back to that dark place in my life that turned me into the kind of person who got me sentenced there.

No, it’s time to be honest. With Blondie…and with myself. About this one thing, at least.

“Jamie, he…” The lump in my throat seems determined to choke me into silence, but I push past the hurdle. “He died four years ago at the ripe old age of eight. He had glioblastoma. Brain cancer,” I clarify when her brow wrinkles in question. “It all happened really quickly.”

Her mouth opens, but she promptly shuts it again, searching my face, which slips beneath her perusal. “I…” Her voice is thick, and though she clears her throat, she only manages a timid, “That’s awful.”

“It’s the reason things are so strained with my parents,” I try to explain, that anger I’ve been holding onto so tightly for the last four years seeping into every sharp line and curve of the letters forming the words that escape me.

“Everyone wants to move on, forget, but I just…can’t. And I can’t forgive him either.”

A flash of doubt passes over her face. “Your brother?”

I shake my head, my nails biting into the skin of my palms. “No, my dad.”

I turn and start walking then, needing the movement to calm me, as Blondie’s bewildered stare burns into my back like a cattle brand.

A few seconds pass, then she falls into step beside me, her breaths uneven.

I speak before she can, sensing her question, even though the words are like broken glass inside me, cutting me everywhere that matters.

“When Jamie was diagnosed, the prognosis was grim. Research into pediatric cancers is already severely underfunded, and glioblastoma is extremely aggressive; the doctors said his odds were terrible—that his only real chance was to try an experimental treatment, like stem cell or gene therapy.”