Page 33 of Never the Best

"Tell me something true," I asked, desperate for her to open up to me.

She stopped and turned to look at me. "What do you want to know?"

I licked my lips.EverythingI wanted to say, but how could I when I had a fiancée waiting for me at home?

"How…how…." I closed my eyes and waited for the storm to pass. "Tell me how I hurt you."

Her eyes went wide, both with, I thought, shockandemotion. "What?"

This was not the time for this conversation, but I desperately wanted to make amends, and the only way to do that was to understand the damage I had done.

"You're a different person than you used to be," I explained. "So am I. That day changed me, too, Pearl."

"How?" she demanded, challenge flickering in her eyes.

The crash of the waves against the sand merged with the roar of my guilt as I confessed the truth. "It made me realize that I had no integrity. I was the kind of person who could hurt another human being simply because…I could. I felt a lot of shame. But not enough, Pearl. Not nearly enough.”

She folded her arms, her sandals still dangling absently from her fingers, as if she needed to comfort herself.

"When I saw you a few years later, I pounced at the opportunity to absolve myself. I thought if I said I was sorry, you'd accept, and it would be over, this cycle of shame and self-loathing." I smirked in self-deprecation. "I was such a fool. I didn't understand then that a mereapologywasworthless. I was even annoyed that you wouldn't accept my generous confession of remorse."

"My mother and Cash were quite upset with me for being rude to you." I could feel her disdain for themandme in her tone. “I didn't come back to Savannah for several years after that."

"I know." I gave her a weak smile. "I waited, you see, for you to come so I could…do better."

She cocked an eyebrow. "Really?"

"But, I realized too late, actually, only recently, that a man who was not a coward would have followed you to California and made his point." It was not easy to lay myself open to her, especially since I didn't know if she'd kick me in the ribs while I was down. But if she did, it was no less than I deserved.

She turned and began walking again. I kept pace with her. We were silent for a while. When she finally spoke, her voice was low, almost drowned out by the sound of the waves.

"It messed me up…big time," she began, and I immediately felt my stomach tighten because I knew whatever she was going to tell me was not going to be pleasant. But if she'd lived it, I had to have the balls to hear her out.

"It was my first time," her voice was small.

"Yes." I could barely get the word out.

She walked straight, looking ahead, while I looked at her, watching her face, waiting for her to explain the devastation I'd brought upon her.

"It took me a while to have sex…I did…I mean, I do. But I tend to go for short relationships, one-night stands. Sex is complicated when you…." She trailed off.

"When you went through what you did?" I finished softly.

She shook her head. "When you look at your body and you hate everything about it."

Fuck!

"Pearl, I thought you were beautiful then, and I think you're beautiful now. It has nothing to do with how you look—though you are gorgeous, it was always about who you are."

She stopped walking and turned to face me.

"You said that my being a virgin made up for how I looked."

She remembered what I'd said, just as I did. You never forgot the time you dropped the lowest you ever could as a human.

"I didn't want them to know that I was attracted to you. That sex with you had been…amazing."

She swallowed.

---