Page 55 of Sugar Rush
Jordy cleared his throat. “Um, well, anyway we were just leaving, so…”
“Right!” The guy laughed a little, shaking his head like he was amused at himself. “Sorry for holding you up! I didn’t realize you were here with somebody!”
“It’s okay,” Jordy assured him. “See you later!”
“I’ll DM you!” He said, giving a final wave as he sprinted back off toward the car he’d come from.
I felt my hand clench into a fist at my side, but I tried to ignore it as I marched back to the truck, Jordy at my heels. The second he’d closed the passenger side door, I revved up the truck.
“Kieran?” He questioned. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I lied, whipping through the parking lot and onto the road, glad our hotel was only a couple of blocks away. After a few more moments of silence, I couldn’t hold in my next question. “He said he was going to DM you?”
“Yeah, on Instagram.”
“You gave a guy your Instagram after talking to him for two minutes in a parking lot?” I asked, the words coming out slowly and deliberately. When I glanced over at him, I could see now that he’d realized why I was upset.
“No!” he said. “Well, I mean, yes. But not just then. I met him earlier today. It was weird seeing him again like that!” He tacked on.
“You met him earlier today? I thought you were staying in the room.”
“I did!” He promised. “I went out to the lobby to get my food. He was delivering it. That’s all.”
I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t. My mind was racing, but my thoughts were sluggish and dark, like they had to wade through black oil to make it from one end of my brain to the other.
It was all so normal and easy for him, to meet people and make friends and network. To exchange social media with a guy he’d just met, just because they were going to the same school. Of course it was. For all I knew, that alpha had been valedictorian of his own school, with amazing grades and extracurriculars and sports participation. That was the kind of person Jordy should have been spending his time with, not someone like me.
“Kieran,” Jordy repeated, his voice more firm this time. “It wasn’t like he was flirting with me or anything. He has a girlfriend. She’s going to our school, too.”
I knew he wasn’t flirting. But that wasn’t really the problem. The problem was that there would be a million of thoseclean cut guys with college sweatshirts, with nice haircuts and expensive sneakers, who thought economics was actually kind of interesting, and who didn’t struggle interacting with people or hide away in their room sketching and listening to music. They didn’t have the past I had. They were normal. They could have normal relationships, without nightmares and screwed up genetics from a guy who drank too much and hit whoever was in close proximity to him, even if that person happened to be his wife and kid.
It would be so easy for him to be with one of them. Not like how it would be with me.
Somehow I’d managed to get to the hotel on autopilot, even though I could barely remember driving at all. Opening my door I hopped out and slammed it, heading toward the empty beach. The sun had set while we’d been eating, dipping down under the horizon, and now the sky was dark.
“Hey!” Jordy barked out the word, hurrying around the truck to catch up with me. “Where are you going?”
“I need to take a walk. Go back to the room.”
“I don’t understand why you’re upset,” he said, ignoring my command.
“I know you don’t.”
Of course he didn’t understand why I was upset. For him, we were just screwing around for a weekend, and maybe even a little while longer. And then he could go off to his snotty, high-achieving school and be fawned over by alphas that actually had a chance at a real life with him. What was even the point of any of this, anyway? How had I actually let myself think this would work for me?
“You don’t have any reason to be jealous!” He insisted, stumbling a bit as the asphalt of the parking lot faded into the soft sand of the beach. It wasn’t a huge beach, and the little slice of sand was surrounded on either side by wooded areas.
“I’m not fucking jealous!” I snapped, turning away from him and heading down the coastline toward the forest, where the trees were thick.
It was a lie. I was so jealous I wanted to die. Not of the friendly alpha with a girlfriend in the fast food parking lot, but of whatever rich, successful fuckboy alpha would end up withmyomega for real.
“Can you just stop and talk to me?” He begged, keeping right at my side, even though my strides were considerably longer than his. Leave it to me to try to outrun a damn track star.
“I need to think. I need to be alone. Just go back to the fucking room,” I repeated, snarling out the words to him, hoping it would scare him into actually listening to me for once.
“No!” He snapped the words back at me. “I’m not going anywhere until you calm down and actually talk to me!”
He didn’t get it, and I couldn’t explain it to him. Keeping my eyes straight ahead because I couldn’t bear to look at him, sticks crunched under our feet as we entered the wooded area. It was even darker here, the lights from the street blocked by the thickening mass of trees.
