Page 57 of Purity

His jaw clenches, and he looks away from me. “It really irritates me when you say that.”

I frown. “When I say what?”

His expression shutters, and he turns in the direction of the wharf. “Let’s go.” His tone is curt. “We can talk about this later.”

Nervousness churns in my stomach, but I force my feet to stay in place. “No, I want you to tell me why you’re mad.”

He whips around, and his gaze burns into mine. “I can’t stand it when you call yourself weak. You are the most stable person in my life. You’ve been there when…” He shakes his head. “You’ve been there when I didn’t even want to be around myself. And you were calm and loving, like you always are. That’s not weakness. It takes strength to be close to someone when they’re falling apart. Strength that I have yet to see in anyone else.” He swallows audibly. “You dazzle me.”

He lowers his head and kisses me softly. Jesus, help me, I love him so much. How am I going to bear it if he doesn’t love me back like I want him to?

By the time he pulls away, my eyes are full of moisture, and I don’t care.

“I’m happy you’re asserting yourself more,” he says with a smile, “and that you’re taking the things you want and standing up for yourself. You should get everything you want. Please don’t call yourself weak.”

“I won’t anymore.” I love you. The words hover on my lips, but I can’t let them out yet. Why spoil this moment when it might become one of my last precious memories with him?

Coldness tightens my chest. Oh my gosh, he was right. He was right all along.

Being with him this way has changed everything. I can’t go back to how we were before. It would shatter me.

Maybe I do have inner strength, but I need to start caring for myself. My soft heart isn’t capable of living this way any longer. I can’t be this close to him with the invisible wall of platonic friendship between us, not when I love him this much.

If he doesn’t want to be with me, I have to end our friendship.

Cole

“Look,” she says after taking a big bite of her bagel. She points to a couple of birds on the sand. “That seagull just stole whatever that little bird was eating. He just came up and swiped it. I told you they were mean.”

A grin spreads over my face. “I think the word you used was ‘cruel’.”

“I was trying really hard to make it sound like my brain was capable of rational thought, and it backfired on me.”

“Oh man, you were high as fuck. It was so cute. At one point, you were staring at your foot like you had never seen it before.”

She opens her mouth and closes it when a woman approaches our table. It takes me a moment to recognize her, and when I do, my skin tingles with foreboding.

Sophia from the other night in the Uber.

“I’m so sorry to intrude on your date,” she says, “but I haven’t been able to stop thinking about the…conversation we had a few days ago about the person we both know.”

My pulse starts to race. “It’s okay,” I say to Sophia. “We don’t have to talk around it.” I look at Livvy. “This is Sophia. She’s a friend of my dad’s.”

Livvy’s eyes widen. “Oh.”

“Yeah.”

Sophia pulls out a chair from our table, and the metal legs screech like bats as they scrape against the concrete. After sitting down, she looks at me probingly. “I promise I’ll be quick. I just kind of panicked when I realized you were his son, and there are a few things I should’ve said that have been weighing on me.”

I swallow, my hands growing cold. “Okay.”

God, I really don’t want to hear any of this, and I would probably tell her that if Livvy weren’t here, but I don’t want it to look like I blame the women my dad most likely manipulates into sleeping with him.

“I only hung out with your dad the one time, just like I told you. But I really should have explained a little more about how it happened. I was the one who approached him. I was out with my girlfriends, and he was at the bar by himself. We all thought he was a hot older man—” She looks at Livvy, smiling cheekily. “I mean, it’s obviously in their genes, right?”

Fuck, Sophia probably thinks Livvy’s my girlfriend, even though I tried to take Sophia home a few days ago.

Like father like son.

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