Page 22 of Knock Knock

I pickedup my balls on the drive over. This was goddamn Xavi we were talking about, and Devon was right. We were awesome at talking. I curb-stomped my nerves, swallowed my pride, and drove my rachet-ass truck to my brother’s place to find my best friend and make everything right. We were grown adults, even though we weren’t the best at it, and we could handle this like we handled everything else.

I parked and got out, trying not to chicken out. Maddox’s truck was gone and so was Gnat, and Xavi didn’t shout back when I yelled his name, so I went back outside. I tried Xavi’s phone, but it must have still been dead. On my way back to the truck, I stopped on the broken step. Dread and a choking feeling locked me up, froze me in place, and turned my head loud. I could see Xavi out there, sitting on the beach with…her. The same chick he went on a date with and lied about scaring off.The blowjob girl.

She didn’t look very scared off! She had her hand on his arm, her head tilted back with a laugh I could hear over the waves crashing. Xavi’s foot stuck out in front of him, but the rest of him looked pretty damn chill for a guy who ran out on me in a pair of flip-flops. Was I the only one making a big deal out of this? Surely Devon wasn’t bullshitting me?

Had I missed my only shot? Had he remembered that he preferred thick thighs to my lean ones? Had he meant it all as a joke, and I lashed out at him because it was the farthest thing from a joke to me? Did he come to the conclusion that the biological clock he was on wouldn’t benefit from me slowing it down?

I’d never run from him before. To be fair, he’d never run from me either, but that seemed to be the theme of the past twenty-four hours. So, I ran to the truck, closed the door enough that it’d keep me alive, and begged this old lady to start silently for once in her life. I turned the key, cringing as the engine groaned. Xavi hadn’t noticed, so I turned it again.

“Come on, baby. Start for me so I can flee.” I turned the key a third time.

Xavi turned his head at the same time the truck choked.

Fuck.

“You son of a meddling bitch,” I seethed at my vehicle. I knew it was purposefully trapping me here. In this cab full of old wrappers, Xavi’s discarded shirts, and cigarette packs, it’d always been the two of us, and the damn truck was just trying to keep the status quo. “You meddle worse than we do.”

Xavi was on his foot, hobbling his way over to me. “Nate?” he called out.

I kept trying the key, never more desperate to get away and hide behind my sunglasses. I kept pressing my foot on the accelerator to give this bitch a drink of gas in the hopes she’d do my dirty work. I was goddamn sweating, and I knew it had nothing to do with the heat and everything to do with my patheticness. Thank whatever lucky stars were sometimes on my side that Xavi was slow as fuck with a bum toe.

“Nate!” he called.

But I couldn’t listen because self-doubts ate me alive and all my insecurities fed off one another, and no matter how hard I tried to remember that Xavi was my best friend, the obnoxious voice in my head said I didn’t deserve him.That all I was capable of was holding him back, getting in his way, blocking him from that life he so desperately wanted to live.

Fuck you, fears! This is not the time!

“Nate! Wait for me!” Xavi called just as the truck decided to give me the win. She fired up on a loud roar and an even louder backfire that drowned out whatever else he said.

I put it into reverse, and as soon as I had the clearance, I jammed into first gear and took off down the gravel road. My heart beat faster than it had the night we fled Bethany’s place, but there was no smiling Xavi in the seat next to me this time. In the rearview mirror, I watched him trip to a stop, throwing his arms wide while shouting something at me.

His face wasn’t angry. It was hurt. What the fuck were we doing? I hurt him, but I was too fucking stubborn to turn around and pick him up.

No wonder pride was the deadliest of all the sins.

CHAPTER8

XAVI

I crashedthrough the back window and gracefully collapsed onto my back. My flip-flops got caught on the windowsill, one falling to smack me in the face, one disappearing outside in the rain, and my dead phone clattered against the floor with Nate’s pack of gum.

So stealth.

I’d broken into the trailer growing up to avoid my asshole dad and my drunk mom and all her wino friends, but I hadn’t had to do any breaking and entering since I moved to the shop where I felt safe. Nate was my safe place, and it sucked that our foundation had been rocked by my big mouth.

Anyway, I executed the break-in pretty perfectly. Barely made a sound. Nate would be sleeping, and I’d crash on the couch and disappear into the shop before he got up. Fuck Maddox and Devon for kicking me off Gnat’s bed like I wasn’t worthy of sleeping on it for a second night. Even if they claimed to do it for my own good.

“Forget your key when you ran like a bitch?”

Shit. Wasn’t as stealth as I thought, butI bit back a retort about him driving off like a bitch.

I tilted my head on the floor, looking at him upside down. He stood there like something I wanted to touch, but I figured the darkness rolling off him made him nothing more than shadows that my hand would swipe through. His abs were out on full display, and the purple underwear he started wearing a few months ago showed off the shape of something Iapparentlywasn’t supposed to have a thing for.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey?” He shook his head. Nate sucked at being mad just as much as I did, but he crossed his arms over his chest and made it look pretty real. He really was pissed at me. “Hey? That’s it?”

He grumbled something else under his breath, and while I was typically pretty pro at deciphering his muttered language, my head was throbbing, and my feels were hurting, and the rain was slanting in through the window to soak me in embarrassment. Nate stepped over me, feet planted on either side of my hips, to close the window before we got yet another mould problem in here. While I laid in a puddle of my fuck ups, I looked up to see a hole in the ass of his underwear. It happened the night we found a squirrel caught in a live trap and Nate hopped the fence to free it. Ah, good times.

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