Page 89 of Drive
I closed my laptop and dialed it back with my heart in my throat. He picked up on the first ring.
“Hello?” I croaked with tears pooling in my eyes.
Silence.
“Reid?”
More silence. “Reid.” It wasn’t a question, it was a demand. I needed to know he was just as ruined by our goodbye as I was. I needed to know the girl in front of him at that concert meant nothing.
That he hadn’t forgotten me. Every beat of my heart was aplease,please,please.
“Stella.” His voice was heavy, slurred. He was drunk. A state I’d never seen him in.
“I’m here. Are you okay?”
“You won them, didn’t you?”
I didn’t answer as he exhaled his cigarette. It sounded like there was a party going on in the distance.
“Of fucking course you did,” he said with a sarcastic chuckle, his voice full of bitterness. “You just can’t stop trying to save me, can you, Grenade?”
“Why did you leave?”
“Why?” Another exhale. Another tension-filled silence. And when he spoke, his voice was ice. “Because I didn’t have any goddamn right to be there. I had no right to ask who that motherfucker was. Not the first time I saw him drop you off and not the last. You were never mine.”
Kneeling on my bed, I clutched my phone tightly. Please. Please. Please.
“I was yours, Reid. I still am. It’s not what you think with him.”
More silence. I heard a woman laughing hysterically in the distance.
“I’m sorry.”
The phone went silent in my hand.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
“Into the Black”
Chromatics
“Stella.” It was a plea from Lexi. “Stella, please get up.”
I pressed my face into my pillow and pulled the covers over my head.
“Get up, damn it!” she snapped as she opened my blinds.
“Don’t, Lexi, please just leave me alone. Okay? I don’t need a throw-me-in-the-shower-clothed intervention. I’msick.”
“You’re not sick! And you missed a week of classes. Your parents are calling, and I can’t keep lying to everyone!”
“Tell them I’m sick,” I said through clenched teeth.
“You’re going to lose your job. Both of them,” she said, pacing next to my bed. It dipped and I looked over to see Ben staring down at me. There was nothing close to the light humor I typically saw in his eyes.
He gripped my hand and stayed silent while Lexi ranted.
“Stella, get out of bed! You’re done doing this. He’s not worth it.”
