Page 16 of Summer Redemption

She rolls her eyes and snarks, “You regretted it so much that you never stopped?”

I run a hand over my face while feeling lost. “I don’t know if I can even explain it.”

With narrowed eyes, she challenges me, “Try.”

“It’ll sound stupid,” I admit, “because it was stupid. You studied all the time and were always walking around with a book. It was clear you were going to make something of yourself.”

“So, you,” she scoffs, “were jealous?”

“No,” I hold my hands up and wave them slightly, “that’s not what I’m saying at all. You were an easy target because of how much you studied, and you didn’t seem to care about the things most of the other girls cared about.” She rolls her eyes, but the words keep pouring from me. “You didn’t care about boys or makeup or what clothes you wore.”

“Yeah,” she interrupts the roll I’m on, “you loved making fun of my clothes as well.” She motions toward her body, which I haven’t been able to ignore or forget about since the moment I saw her the last time she came out to Limitless. “As you can see, I learned how to dress. It wasn’t that I didn’t care,” her voice starts to rise with anger and as much as I want to run away, I force myself to stay still, “it was that I had more important things to worry about. I knew it wouldn’t be easy to get out of Wintervale for school. My parents weren’t going to pay some crazy expensive tuition, but I wanted to go to the best school I could get into. Academics were the only way to make it happen.”

“You don’t need to justify your priorities to me,” I whisper. “I was just a stupid kid who didn’t understand them at the time. But I get it now.” She doesn’t look convinced, so I reiterate, “Really. I get it. I should have been following your lead instead of making fun of you for working toward you dream in the smartest way possible.”

What I don’t tell her is that I liked her and didn’t know how to deal with it. Not when Fletcher had shown me that love, even the soulmate kind of love he always had with Eden, wasn’t as great as romance movies try to make it seem. Blaming my fear on my brother and his experience, when I didn’t really understand it, feels like a cop out.

Even if it was real for me at the time.

Now, with Sunshine standing in front of me and really listening to me, it just feels like a hollow excuse.

She throws her hands up, frustration rolling off her. “You know what? While I can appreciate that you’re apologizing now, you really have no idea what your words and treatment did to me.” I open my mouth, but she’s on a roll and isn’t done yet. “You hurt me, Huxley,” her voice breaks but she clears herthroat and gets it together. Her next words are stronger, “Almost everyone followed your example because you were popular and nice to pretty much everyone else. Everyone treated me like there was something wrong with me all because of you,” she spits out the words.

As she angrily pulls the band thing from her hair and runs her fingers through it, I don’t know what to say. My mind blanks completely as I’m confronted with the pain written all over her face. Her movements are precise as she piles her hair on top of her head in a messy topknot which looks casual and so damn sexy, even though it’s the last thing she’s trying to be.

“I didn’t even get asked to go to prom,” hurt laces her voice along with a heaping side of anger. “I went with Sofie because I wasn’t going to miss out on such a big milestone, but I didn’t have a date. No one even thought about asking me out.”

I want to tell her how wrong she is because I wanted to ask her. Really, I did, but I didn’t think she’d say yes. No, I knew she’d turn me down and she would have been right to do it.

Giving into being a coward felt easier than being rejected.

I’m an asshole.

“You made fun of my name,” she spits the words. “I didn’t name myself.” With a shake of her head her anger mounts. “It took me a long time to trust people because I wasn’t sure if they would find something to make fun of me for, just like you did. I was afraid to share who I am with people in case they’d pick me apart.”

“I’m sorry,” I whimper the words, hating how much damage I did and not being able to answer to it at all.

“You don’t get to be sorry,” she almost screams at me. “And the worst part,” the words are flowing from her mouth while her hands wave through the air, “is that I had the biggest crush on you and then you treated me like complete shit.”

Everything freezes. Everything.

Sunshine’s eyes go wide and our eyes lock for the longest few seconds of my life. And then she turns and runs from the barn.

She doesn’t power walk. She doesn’t amble. She runs, full tilt.

And she doesn’t look back.

My mouth is hanging open and a feeling I’ve never felt before builds in my chest. It picks up speed quickly until it’s the only thing I can feel.

Hope.

I turn toward Buttercup who looks just as surprised as I feel. “Did you just hear what I heard?”

Not for the first time, I wish she could actually answer me. Having a little confirmation on what I just heard would be helpful right now.

She had a crush on me. She liked me.

If I hadn’t heard it with my own ears, I wouldn’t have believed it. But I did and there’s nothing she can say to make me unhear it. Nothing.

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