Page 123 of Boots, Bucket Lists & Bad Ideas
“Because you’re not doing our bucket list without me.” This might be the most truthful thing he’s said to me since this morning.
“Our bucket list?Ours?” I can hardly describe the anger that surges through me.
How dare him?
How fucking dare him?
“Do you hear the irony in your words?”
He steps closer to me, and I hate the way he towers.
“You don’t get to just jump back into my life cause you’re”—I scoff, not even sure what to say—“you’re angry that I kept a list that you clearly didn’t want anything to do with.”
He opens his mouth, but I’m not done.
“I wouldn’t have come if I’d known you were coming.” It’s the truth. “I wouldn’t have gotten out of the RV if I’d known my sisters were going to abandon me with you.”
“The feeling is mutual.”
“Trust me. I know!” The words explode out of me, raw and guttural. “You don’t have to tell me how much you don’t want to be near me. The night you took off said it in fucking spades.”
His face shifts.
Something weird.
Something familiar, yet not from the man he has become. Not the angry, bitter, woman-fucking-manwhore.
“Because it was just sex, right? Just banging the forbidden Fox daughter.”
His jaw tightens.
“Don’t go quiet now.” I scoff. “Just say it. Just admit it. You used me to screw me. To tell all your jock friends in the locker room and laugh and high-five with them. And the second you succeed, you walked away.”
The vein on his throat throbs.
“Just say it!” The words tears from inside me, so loud it feels like the world is shaking. “Tell me it was just sex. Tell me every single thing we did meant nothing to you, including the bucket list. Tell me.”
He says nothing.
Like always, he says nothing.
But for the first time, something clicks inside me. It’s long overdue. His silence only proves he was never the person I thought he was. I don’t need his confession, guilt, or acknowledgment.
I just need to walk away.
And this time, I will, but I’ll leave everything that is our past right here on this dead-end street.
I glance at the map, destroyed under the hoof. “We’d better find a gas station or corner store to get some directions.”
I turn and take two steps when he finally speaks.
“I have my phone.”
“What?”
He repeats himself, and I slowly turn around.
“You can navigate us to the campground.”
