Page 45 of Broken Romeo

“That’s the one.”

Huh. Kate must be pretty talented to have played a leading role as a kid. I can’t imagine having that sort of passion for anything. Even my hobbies were mostly chosen by my parents because they looked good on a transcript or in the papers. Having a son who was a star quarterback did well in the polls. I doubted a son in theater or the arts would have the same effect.

Kate slid off my bed and gathered her bag into her arms. “Thanks for…”

“Almost killing you?”

She smiled. “I was going to say for taking care of me. Passing out in the middle of a party would have been humiliating.”

“You sure you’re okay to drive now?”

She paused briefly before nodding. “Yeah. I feel fine.”

I stood as well, and grabbed her keys off my desk, tossing them to her.

She caught them easily in one hand, grinning. “So, are you going to sit next to me in class next week? Or continue pretending that we’re not friends?”

She just didn’t get it. Still. I shook my head. “Can’t you tell that Professor McCay gets weird any time you and I talk?”

She shrugged into her backpack. “So what? We didn’t do anything wrong. All we did was open a door.”

“Yeah. A closet door where she happened to be getting it on with someone.”

Kate lifted one shoulder to her ear, impressively unaffected by the fact that we’d caught our professor playing hide the salami with someone who looked half her age in a storage closet. “Who cares? If she’s guilty about that, then that’s on her. Not me.”

I care, I wanted to say. It mattered to me if I passed this class or not and I didn’t want to make life any harder on myself than it needed to be. “Yeah, but maybe it’s just easier for us to keep our distance in front of her. Avoid this becoming even more of a thing.”

“Wow,” Kate said, hiking her backpack higher on her shoulder. “For someone so sporty, I expected you to have a little more backbone.”

My grandfather’s words rang in my head: There’s the right choice. And the right choice for you. Sometimes, you need to choose yourself.

But in this case, staying away was the right choice for both Kate and me. My grandfather would have kissed the girl and broken her heart without a second thought.

With a sigh, I said, “Trust me. You don’t want to be my friend, Katherine. It’s not meant to be.”

“I’m not sure how I’m supposed to react to someone who was just about to kiss me telling me now that they can’t even be my friend.”

“Exactly,” I snapped. “I’m an asshole. I would have fucking kissed you tonight and then not have even waved at you on Monday.”

I wasn’t going to be that guy. Not anymore.

The hurt expression on her face sliced into me. I hated that expression. I hated that I caused it.

“You’re not that cruel.”

I gritted my teeth. “Yeah. I am.”

It’s in my goddamn genes. Even if it was for her own good to walk away, I knew she wouldn’t be able to see that. Not tonight. Not Monday. Probably not for a long, long time.

“So what? I’d just be some notch on your bedpost?”

I swallowed hard, knowing that I had to push her away. There was something so magnetically beautiful and alluring about her. And I wanted her so damn badly.

But I couldn’t. We couldn’t. And I had to make sure she stayed far, far away from me.

I hardened my heart and said the one thing that I knew would keep her the fuck away. “To be a notch on my bedpost, I’d need a hell of a lot more than some virgin’s first kiss.”

Her face grew hard, eyes narrowing as she shook her head. “You don’t mean that.”

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