Page 78 of Bitter Truths

“Am I that bad?”

“No. There’s always worse.” He smiles, and I sense the heaviness behind that smile.

What pain lurks below for my friend?

“Okay.” I exhale. “But if I get hurt, you’re going down with me.”

“Yes!” He fist pumps the air.

Sliding onto my sled, I stare at the vista surrounding me, spellbound by the beauty, before my heart lodges in my throat and I’m sailing over the packed snow once more.

“Holy shit,” I shriek, exhaling when I reach the bottom and stop with a lurch before a bush.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Griffin growls.

“Wha—”

“Are you insane? That hill is dangerous,” he snarls, pulling me up by my arm.

“I think we’ve established that I’m crazy,” I mutter, wrenching away from him and grabbing my sled as Aaron flies past me with a huge smile on his face.

“Halsey, that’s not what I meant. You shouldn’t be up there.”

Swinging toward him, I say, “Why do you care? Go back to Miranda and worry about what she’s doing.”

“Why do I care?” he grumbles, leaning into my face, “Because I fucking love you.”

We both swing around when Miranda approaches, and I turn to him heatedly and say, “If you loved me, you wouldn’t be with her. You don’t know how to love. Stay away from me.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

Your love haunts me.

GRIFFIN

After Halsey’s passionate words at the slopes the other day, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what she said. Maybe I am sending mixed messages by pretending to move on. But I’m tired of it, and I’m tired of the constant fucking ache in my chest. So instead of avoiding her in class like I’ve been doing, I sit down beside her, smiling bitterly when she glances at me with wide eyes.

Her head whips back around to the board, and I study her closely, my chest tight. “Hals, what am I supposed to do? You refuse to talk to me.”

This gets the reaction I wanted, and my dick stands at attention when her lips pull back, and she rasps, “You fucking broke my heart, you dick.”

“And you broke mine,” I say through my teeth, my heart clenching at her pretty eyes blazing at me.

After a tense standoff, she turns away and shifts in her seat. “Is that right?”

“Yes. I’ve thought of nothing but you for fucking years—years, Halsey—and I know I was wrong, and it was wrong, but thinking you hated me and threw me away ate at me and ate at me until I was nothing but a bitter asshole.”

Fuck if I can’t make her understand. She was my world, and it fucking imploded. I was nothing without her, reduced to the basic parts my parents insisted I be. She breathed life into my cold-ass world, and the absence of that life created my death.

You can’t revive someone only to send them back to the underworld and not expect mayhem. She tamed the devil, but I fed off her essence, and without it, I became the cold, dark demon lurking below the surface.

Was that the right way to go? No, but I never said I was fucking perfect. Can’t she see the pain I feel? Doesn’t she understand what it’s like to fucking look in the eyes of the one person who matters and be turned away, again?

I mean, isn’t that what we’ve been doing for years? What a fucking hypocrite.

She doesn’t answer, refusing to look at me, and I turn away with a grunt, staring at nothing until the fucking class is over and I can leave. And all the way to the gym, I replay her words over and over in my head until I let it fucking go.

I don’t want to see her cry, and it’s all I fucking do. I’m tired of being the bad guy.

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