Page 83 of Collision
“It’s worked so far.”
Thomas cracks a faint smile. “You never get tired of denying the truth to yourself, do you?”
The nerve, showing up here after weeks of silence and presuming to know how I feel! I snort, shaking my head, and put the book back in my bag. “You’re ridiculous, Thomas. You’ve been here less than fiveminutes and have already made me lose my patience.”
“A record,” he retorts proudly.
“Are you kidding me? What exactly do you want from me, Thomas?” I demand with a sharp look. “You come around here after all this time, talking to me like nothing happened, after having thrown every one of your new conquests in my face, and you expect me to laugh and joke with you?”
He shrugs a shoulder. “Seems to me you also didn’t miss any opportunities to show me how into that idiot you were, no?”
“That’s not the same, not at all!”
“Yes, it is, and you know it.” He stares at me grimly.
Okay, it is possible that I got a little closer to Logan than I really wanted to when Thomas was around, but I never kissed Logan in front of him. He did that, though, with his lady friends.
“Forget it. And Logan has nothing to do with it anyway,” I answer, certain.
“He definitely has something to do with it.”
“No, it’s not about him! It’s about you. My God, how can you not get this?” I put my face in my hands before looking at him wearily. “You hurt me! I let you into my house, I told you about me, about my life, about my father. And you… You belittled everything,” I admit, re-opening a wound that hasn’t yet healed. Thomas frowns seriously at me, but I see his face through a veil of humiliation. My eyes are filled with tears, and I’m forced to bite the inside of my cheek to keep them from falling.
“I know,” he says, bowing his head, his voice full of regret. “I have a bad habit of saying things I don’t mean when I’m pissed off,” he defends himself in a small voice. And I let out an unhappy laugh because I feel like I’m having déjà vu.
“Yeah, I’ve heard this story before, for a good two years…” I shake my head. “I have no desire to relive the past.”
Thomas releases a sigh, surrendering, and the features of his face soften. “I know I hurt you and, whether you believe it or not, I’m not proud of it.” Something about the tortured way in which he speakstells me that this is his way of apologizing to me. Although it’s not the best excuse in the world, I can sense an underlying sincerity that makes me let my guard down. “Can we…” He runs a hand through his hair. “Can we stop all this and start over again?” he asks, his voice uncertain.
What?
“Start over again? What does that mean?”
“I don’t know. We could be like…friends?” he ventures, leaving me stunned.
“Friends?” I repeat skeptically.
“Don’t make that face,” he scolds me. “It’s a fair compromise.”
A fair compromise? To have him back in my life, without actually being able to have him? More like a fair punishment if anything.
“I don’t think that will work.”
Thomas frowns. “How do you know?”
“Have you ever been friends with a girl without benefits?”
He looks at me for a few seconds, caught off guard. He thinks about it before giving a troubled shake of his head. “No.”
“I figured. I’m not going to pretend to be your friend just to make it a bit more convenient for you to try to sleep with me.”
“That’s not what I want to do.” He sounds almost offended. “It’s true, I’ve never been friends with a girl without benefiting, but there’s a first time for everything, right?” He pauses and smiles sweetly at me, before inching closer. I hold my breath. “Do you want to be my first, Ness?”
A laugh escapes me. “Do you realize how absurd that sentence sounds coming out of your mouth?” I smile and he does the same in return. The light that illuminates his face melts my heart.
Damn you, Thomas.
“It definitely sounded better in my head,” he adds.
