Page 89 of Here's to Now

Ignoring how she lightly tosses out the dreaded C word, I ask, “Wait, you’ve been to Vegas before?”

“Yeah? Hasn’t everyone over the age of twenty-one? It’s, like, a rite of passage.”

“Yeah, no. I’ve never been. Never really cared to go.”

“Right,bad boyGaige Addams didn’t want to go to Sin City. I call bullshit.”

Opening the car door for her, I say, “No, really. I’m actually quite fond of Wakefield and haven’t thought much about traveling.”

Somehow making an action as simple as getting into a car look delicate, she says, “You surprise me more and more every day, Gaige.”

“Is that a bad thing?”

She smiles. “Never.”

Climbing in behind the wheel, I back us out of the parking space—my very own designated one, mind you—and head out toward Logan International.

“So, what are we going to tell people when we arrive at the airport together?”

“Oh, please. Like they’ll see us exit the car together. We’ll just say we bumped into one another. BOOM. Mic drop.” Then she does the classic mic drop movement, and I fall in love with her just a little bit more.

“We’re still hiding this?”

When she doesn’t say anything for several seconds, I peek over at her, only to find her staring at me with a blank expression.

“If that’s what you want to call it.”

The lack of emotion in her voice tells me I said something wrong, but I don’t know what.

Sighing, I flip on the radio and turn up the music, knowing that whatever is bothering her will come out eventually. Haley isn’t one to wallow in her annoyance.

I’m right, because not even two minutes later, she flips off the radio and turns to me, squaring her shoulders and notching her chin up an inch.

“I don’t like that you think we’re ‘hiding’ this.”

“Aren’t we, though?”

“No!” she shouts, and I flinch. I’ve only ever heard her truly raise her voice one time in the year and some change I’ve known her. This surprises me.

I don’t say anything because I don’t agree with her. Wearehiding it, even if it is unintentional. We never thought it was necessary to let people know about our relationship, so we never have, but we’ve had opportunities to show up to get-togethers as a couple and haven’t. So, yeah, I’d say we’re hiding it.

I’m done hiding. I’ve spent my life in the shadows of pain and embarrassment.

Clearly she doesn’t feel the same way.

“Fine. You’re right.”

Or maybe she does.

“I am?” I ask, flabbergasted.

“Yes, and I’m sorry. I’m… I don’t know. I love having something for myself, you know? And I think—no, Iknow—Rae is going to bepissedat me when she finds out how long we’ve been together. Hell, how long we’veknownone another. I just got my sister back. I can’t lose her again.”

Grating my teeth together, I choose my next words cautiously. “I think that’s bullshit.” Okay, so maybe I didn’t worktoohard at choosing my words, but fuck, she’s driving me mad with this crap.

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me, Haley.” I flick my eyes toward her just in time to see her react to me using her full name, something I don’t do often. “I think it’s bullshit. It’s a stupid, lame reason. At first, I understood. We were just friends, not evengoodfriends, just two people finding comfort in one another. Then, it grew into something physical. I even understood keeping it under wraps then. It was something new and we had no idea if it was going to become anything. But it did. It became something big. We’re practically living together now. Why in the hell are we still hiding it? Why are we still pretending that what we’re doing is something bad? We’re better than that. You mean more to me than that.”

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