Page 33 of Wild Obsession

“Timothy Thatcher, get out here this instant,” she shrieks.

Understanding knocks the wind out of me, but I still want to tell this woman, who is definitely Tim’s mom, to fuck right off. I nearly do, but Tim reacts first, scrambling out from under me like I’m on fire.

“Shit,” he hisses. “Shit. Oh shit.”

That’s all he says to me. He scrambles for the door, and just like that, his mother is yanking him out of my car. She shoots me a deadly glare before slamming the door shut.

I blink, stunned from the rapid reversal of fortune. As I watch from my backseat, the woman hauls Tim away by the scruff of his neck like he’s a puppy that peed on the carpet.

And that’s it.

He doesn’t look over his shoulder for me. He doesn’t say anything. He never texts me again. In fact, he never even returns to school. That is his final day at our high school. He vanishes so swiftly I start to wonder if he ever truly existed in the firstplace.

I try to reach him a couple times. I’m young, and my heart hurts in a way I don’t have words for yet. He never responds, not to the texts, not to the calls, not even that one time I tried emailing. For eight years, I hear nothing at all. Not even “goodbye.”

The day our manager tells us we’re touring with The Ten Hours, I’m a teenager all over again. I’m that hurt, confused, abandoned kid, that kid wondering why he wasn’t worth a single text, a single call, not even a like on social media, that kid wondering why he was nothing more an experiment Tim could toss aside the second we got caught. A toy who meant nothing to him the moment it became inconvenient.

When our manager announces the tour, I vow to make my pain Tim’s problem.

Chapter Sixteen

Keannen

I MET SOMEONE. I like him.

I can’t move. I can hardly blink. Tim gapes at me, face pale, lips almost disappearing from how hard he presses them together. His words echo inside me, and I’m not sure which scare me the most. Is it the part where his parents clearly disowned him? Is it the part where he said he “met someone?” Is it the part where he admitted he cares about that person?

About me?

I flash back to when we were kids in high school, all that time we spent together. I couldn’t afford to imagine a future, even back then, but maybe Tim could. Maybe he did. Maybe he imagined us together, and this deranged reunion has rekindled his hopes.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hey.”

Neither of us move. We just keep staring. Finally, he tromps through the manicured shrubbery between us, picking his way past the bushes and trees until he’s standing in the street with me. The dark cloaks us, but it can’t hide the tension in his face.

“I guess you heard all that,” he says.

I shrug a shoulder. “Jacob and I…” I flounder for an excuse. “We were coming back. I happened to…” I wave vaguely in the direction of the hotel. I doubt it helps. It’s clear I stopped here to listen to him, and it’s clear I heard something I shouldn’t have.

“Listen, it was the heat of the moment,” Tim says. “I’m sorry. I don’t want you to think…”

That you actually like me?

No, he wouldn’t want me thinking that, would he? That’s why he couldn’t send so much as a text in eight years. He probably didn’t even mean what he said to his parents on the phone. He just knew they’d freak out harder if he said he had feelings for someone. By this point, I should know better than to believe him.

“Don’t worry,” I say, voice steadier and harder than before. “I know.”

“You know?” He blinks at me.

“I get it,” I say. “My parents aren’t exactly supportive either. Sometimes you say what you need to say, even if it’snot true.”

His eyebrows furrow toward each other and he cocks his head. “I didn’t lie to them, Keannen. Everything you heard was true.”

My stomach drops, my shield of denial crumbling as quickly as I erected it. It would be easier to believe those things he said were lies, less complicated, less frightening. Because if they aren’t lies, that means Tim feels things for me he shouldn’t, things I can’t begin to contend with. He’s supposed to hate me. I’ve done nothing but push him around, doing everything in my power to ensure he’s off-balance every time he plays drums on a stage, yet here he is possibly falling for me. It’s such a ridiculous notion I might laugh if I didn’t feel sick to my stomach.

“Keannen, I—”

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