Page 22 of For Three Seconds

But it was my fault. I was the one who went with Gigi to that party. I was the one who got drunk and couldn’t find Gigi, so I called my mom to pick me up. I was the reason they were dead. If it weren’t for me, they would still be alive. I got drunk, and I killed them.

I held on tighter to Nick, and I sobbed because, at that moment, I just felt too much. My brother soothed me. He rubbed my back, combed his fingers through my hair, and told me everything would be okay. It was a lie. I didn’t know how he could stand to look at me when I couldn’t do the same.

* * *

A dayaway from school was just what I needed to feel semi-better. Too bad for me, I’d caught whatever bug Dylan and Audrey had. I was lying on the couch, wrapped in a blanket, when there was a knock on my door.

Thinking it was someone selling something, I didn’t bother to get up. The knock came again, and for a second, I got scared. Nick was at work and my friends were at school.

“Open the door, Scarlett,” Gavin’s voice boomed through the walls.

With shaky feet, I made my way to the door. I looked down at myself. I was wearing black sweatpants and a white long sleeved-shirt. I looked like death.

Then, I cursed myself. He had a girlfriend. Still, I opened the door. It didn’t matter how many times I told myself Gavin was Gigi’s. In my mind, he was also mine.

And that was dangerous.

“You look like shit, Davis,” he stated from where he stood. His cheeks looked rosy from the cold wind and his lips were redder than normal.

“What are you doing here?” I managed to say, my voice coming out scratchy.

Gavin stared at me for a few seconds without saying anything. His gaze was taking me in. His eyes traveled from the top of my head to my fuzzy socks.

“You haven’t been to school, and our project is due Friday,” he said.

Right. It was hard to work on a project when you barely talked to your partner. When Mr. Reeves gave us class time, we sat across from each other, ignoring one another.

Stepping aside, I motioned for him to come in. As he got settled by removing his jacket and getting his paperwork ready, I went to my room to get mine. Before I went out of my room, it hit me that I was alone with Gavin for the first time in years.

He was Gigi’s boyfriend, except that excuse wasn’t working. Not when my best friend was starting to feel like someone I used to know.

When I walked into the living room, Gavin was already on the floor, his paperwork spread out all over the place. Looking at him when no one was around, when no one was looking at what I was doing, it hit me how incredibly handsome he was. As if he felt my stare, he looked up at me, those dark eyes not giving anything away.

“We going to get to work or what?” he rasped.

Shaking my head, I sunk to the floor across from him.

“Do you need anything to drink? To eat? If you want to use the bathr—”

He cut me off. “I know where everything is.”

Right, he did.

We sat in silence as we both worked on our marriage project. I had a feeling we weren’t going to do as good as I had initially hoped. About a half hour passed when I started to have a cough attack. I hated being sick. I could deal with sneezing, even chills, but coughing, I loathed with a passion.

“Here.” Gavin was right in front of me with a bottled water.

As I drank, his hand came to my forehead, and I froze. It was like I was twelve again, and I waited for him to kiss me. Our eyes clashed, and I could see the moment he stopped breathing because there was no rise to his chest.

“You don’t seem hot. Have you eaten?”

“No,” I said.

Gav sat up and went to my kitchen. He started moving stuff around, then came back, looking angry.

“Jesus, you have nothing to eat, Scar,” he growled right before he grabbed his coat and walked out of my condo, slamming the door on the way out.

I wasn’t feeling too good, so I didn’t have it in me to care. I pulled my blanket from the sofa where I had left it and laid on the floor. I just needed to close my eyes for a second before I continued to work. Gavin might not care about me or his grade, but I did.

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