Page 103 of Finding Delaware

My brows slam together. “What?”

“Still?” His hand drops to his chest, clutching it like a string of pearls. “Even after everything?”

“Still what? What are you talking about?”

He slides two shots over to me, shaking his head in disbelief. “Here, sweetie, you need these more than I do.”

“What, why?” Sighing, I raise my gaze to the ceiling. “Just spit it out, Royce.”

His eyes narrow as he jerks his head in Taylor’s direction. “You’re still in love with him.”

Not a question. A statement.

I open my mouth to refute that statement, but nothing comes out. Because I can’t.

“He used to beat the shit out of you, call you names, totaled your car, and then outed you to your dad and everyone after you gave him your scholarship.” Royce sips his beer slowly, studying me. “I’m not one to judge, Huckslee, but that’s...wow.”

“It’s fucking toxic,” I growl as I scrub my face, hanging my head. “Everything about this shit with him is toxic. And I fucked up. I fucked up so bad.”

Royce blinks in surprise. “You? What did you do?”

“I...I hurt him.”

So much more than that, I took something from him. Something that didn’t belong to me.

God, Taylor’s first time with a man, and that’s the experience I left him with? Shame coils inside my chest like a venomous snake. I wouldn’t blame him if he never wanted another dick in his mouth ever again.

“Huckslee, he hurts you too. What else is new?”

“No, it’s–” I lick my lips, resting my forehead on my arm. “He hasn’t even laid a hand on me since that night in high school when he broke my arm. And he was so torn up about it, I remember.” He nearly threw up in the hospital room when he apologized to me. And then later, when he’d taken me by the hand and pulled me onto the track to explain himself...when he’d kissed me...

Memories flood my brain, everything I’ve shoved deep down over the last four years boiling to the surface. All the times Taylor tried to make things right, to communicate like a fucking adult, and I just pushed him away. Literally. Onto his ass in the snow when I saw him for the first time since I left.

Royce’s voice pulls me back to reality. “So, because he hasn’t hit you in a long time, does it mean he gets a free pass forwhat he did at prom? I’m not trying to get into your business, Huck, but the guy is clearly not good for you.”

“I’m not good for him,” I find myself answering, raising my head to stare at him in despair. “He’s been trying, and I’ve been the one with the problem.”

My dad used to smack me around sometimes.

Taylor’s words from the cabin hit me then, straight to the fucking lungs, stealing the oxygen right out of my body. An image flashes before my eyes of his back in the ninth-grade locker room, covered in bruised fingerprints. How he freaked out when I noticed them, and when I told the school counselor, I got detention for hitting him first. I was so blinded by anger from his lying about who started the fight that I completely forgot about what started it in the first place.The fucking bruises!

All those times he told me his dad was an asshole, how he always came home from visits seeming stiff and withdrawn, the story he told me about his bike getting taken away. This whole fucking time, I was hung up on the bike, but it wasn’t about the bike at all. It was always about getting away from his father, who was hurting him.

And I’ve been doing the exact same goddamn thing.

He tried so hard to tell me, but I was so focused on the past that I wouldn’t listen.

Oh, God.

“Royce, I think–” Nausea roils in my gut as I hop off the stool quickly, bumping the table and upturning a few shots. “I think I’m gonna be sick.”

I make a beeline for the bathroom, keeping my head down and not hearing whatever he hollers after me. A short hallwayleads to the men’s room, but the door is locked when I get there. Banging my fist on it, I yell at whoever is inside to hurry up before leaning back against the concrete wall.

The floor spins beneath me, threatening to lay me out flat. Bile is working its way up my throat, but I swallow it down, breathing through my nose while I pound on the bathroom door again. I didn’t even feel the panic attack coming, but now it’s hitting me with full force, and I know I’m about to lose it.

A muffled voice shouts from the other side of the door. “Fuck off!”

“Dude, hurry the hell up, I’m gonna puke!”

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