Page 21 of Obsessed with the Heartbreaker

Yeah, that was the only reason.

“Is something wrong?” I asked, straightening up with all the pencils and pens I’d gathered from the bed.

His shoulders tensed further. “Other than poverty and war?”

“Withyou, smartass. You look tense.”

I shouldn’t be asking. I knew that, and yet I couldn’t stop myself.

Henry didn’t even mull over it before he replied, “None of your business.”

“You could make me listen to your woes if you wanted to annoy me even more,” I suggested like an idiot.

What was I even saying? Words were coming out of my mouth without my brain ordering it.

It was the Henry Campbell effect.

“Don’t ask me about my woes if you don’t want me to ask about why you sounded jealous about Maddox earlier,” he tersely replied, makingmetense all over.

“I’m not—”

“Don’t bother with lies, Andino. I could always see them in your face.”

And didn’t that land like a rock in my stomach?

Because he had. He always had. Something that even then, when we were on good terms, had terrified me.

I shut my mouth and kept tidying up.

Was I jealous of Maddox? Was this bitter feeling in the back of my tongue every time I saw him, when I sawHenrycome out of his bedroom, the green-eyed monster?

Much to my demise, I had to admit to myself that it probably was. He was, after all, my replacement, wasn’t he? The person that Henry nowadays bared his soul to. The one he told his secrets, his deepest desires, the one he didn’t need to act around.

Did they spend lazy afternoons laying side by side, talking about anything and everything? Did Henry want to kiss him?

Had they already fucked?

A tight ball formed in my chest, irrational anger making me bite my tongue.

I hadn’t been able to admit to it then, but as time passed, I’d slowly come to terms with it. The fact that this longing I felt for Henry wasn’t something that you could call mere friendship. Especially if you paired it with the curl of heat I’d felt when he kissed me.

Especially when the thought of Henry pressing behind me had come to me more than once while I was taking care of myself in the shower.

But thinking about it now was useless. It would only make things more difficult, especially knowing that when Henry found out about me helping his father—and he would eventually, of that I was sure—he would hate me, for real, forever. I would be as good as dead to him, and that would be it for us.

So if I knew it, and I knew that the practical thing would be to just let it go, why couldn’t I just stop wondering if Henry and Maddox were secretly together?

Because I was a masochist, that was why.

Picking up more papers, from both the bedandthe floor, I found some that weren’t just loose notes and homework.

They were music sheets.

“Do you still play?”

Henry whipped his head toward me, his chestnut hair fanning like he was in a damn hair-product commercial, and in two steps, he was next to me, pulling the sheets off my hands, and throwing them into a drawer.

“Not anymore.”

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