Page 69 of Nash

“I love you guys,” I say, taking a deep breath. “I love him too.”

My friends gasp.

“I can't believe you’re admitting it,” Monroe says.

“Act like you two didn't already see that coming from a mile away,” I say.

“Of course we did,” Blakely says. “But you admitting it is great. But now that everything just happened, what are you going to do?”

“I don't know,” I admit. “How he reacted…what he said, it hurts. And I can understand the anger, but ithurt. The idea that he thinks everything I did was for views...”

“I am so not on his side,” Monroe says in the gentlest way possible. “But you did set this up as a business arrangement in the beginning. It's not such a leap to think that he could doubt himself in your life from the way this started.”

I drop my head into my hands, doing my best to take deep breaths and try to center myself. To try to think clearly and logically and take all my emotion and pain out of it.

When I look at it from his point of view, I can kind of see where the outburst came from. Hell, I'd been on the verge of having one after Darrell told me Nash was talking bad about me in locker room. I had been ready to believe Darrell, even though my heart said I shouldn't. And Nash has never been in a relationship before, so it’s not like his communication skills are perfect, but that reasoning didn't make it hurt any less.

“I can see how he might get to that conclusion,” I finally say, looking at my best friends.

“I've gone about this the entire wrong way. But in the beginning, I really did believe it was just a business situation between us. I had no idea I was going to fall in love with this asshole.”

The girls laugh, and I can't help but join them, shaking my head.

“How am I going to prove to him that the videos and the views and the success that we've had has nothing to do with the way I feel about him? And how am I going to forgive him for being a massive dick today?”

“That's up to you,” Blakely says. “It's hard to forgive someone who's hurt you, but loving someone isn't easy. It takes work. It takes a whole lot of understanding and accountability and communication. There’s a massive learning curve and it isn’t always orgasms and rainbows.”

I huff a laugh.

“It's already a huge step that you're owning your part in it,” Monroe adds. “Both of you need to realize that neither one of you communicated properly.”

Fear trickles into my veins. “And if you're wrong? If he doesn't feel about me the same way I feel about him?”

“Then the whole sugar-in-the-gas-tank thing is looking a lot more plausible,” Monroe says.

“Or I can get Lawson to hide a dead fish in his locker,” Blakely offers.

I laugh, leaning into their embraces as I do my best to just breathe.

My heart feels broken, but I can see the hand I played in it. And I can see the way he mishandled it as well.

We're both at fault, and if I have any hope of repairing this, I'm going to need to earn back his trust, and he'll need to earn back mine.

But I'm terrified neither of us knows how to do that.

CHAPTER 19

NASH

We just wonin conference finals, a feat that is fucking huge for the Badgers to even be playing in, but I can't feel the sense of a win in my heart.

It's too busy being fucking broken into a million pieces.

And it's my own damn fault.

I know that now. Know that I should’ve taken a fuckingbreathbefore storming off and finding Reese a few days ago in that coffee shop with Darrell, but I saw her sitting with him and Ilostit.

I thought I'd lost her, and every emotion came storming through the floodgates in a way I couldn’t catch.

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