Page 129 of Betting on You

I looked at her message and felt like such an asshole, but what the hell was I supposed to say? The truth? The truth was that yes, I’d absolutely switched shifts to avoid Bailey, because I couldn’t handle my feelings.

Or hers.

I turned up the volume on my Spotify playlist, but the music didn’t help. Conan Gray just made it worse—he always made it worse, but I was a masochist that way—and Volbeat wasn’t doing a damn thing to drown out the thoughts pinging around in my head.

Ridiculously pathetic thoughts that didn’t matter even a tiny little bit.

Because I was doing the right thing, pretending that night hadn’t existed.

Did I want to ignore reality and justbewith Bailey? Fuck yes.That night with her in the blanket fort had been… shit, was there a word? It’d been everything, and I’d damn near wanted to cry when I climbed out and left her alone.

I’d never meant to kiss her that night. My only goal had been to make her less sad, but when she looked at me with those big eyes that I’d fucking dreamed about, I was selfish. I ignored common sense and lost myself in her, taking everything she gave me while clamoring for more.

Fucking moron.

Because now my selfishness might’ve ruined everything. If I hadn’t kissed her, I’d have her in my life every day—at the very least on every day that we worked together.

But now everything was broken.

She either wanted a relationship, which wasn’t happening because it would eventually destroy what we had, or she was so pissed at me for bailing that what we had was already destroyed.

And the terrifying thing was that I didn’t have a plan. For once in my fucking life, I had no idea how to proceed. I’d switched shifts out of sheer procrastination, needing to stay away from her until I could figure my shit out.

Because all I knew was that if I saw her right now, or talked to her on the phone, I might very well do something stupid like kiss her again or ask her out.

Beg her to love me forever.

And all of those things spelled certain death for Charlie-and-Bailey.

No, I was going to figure out a way to fix this so things didn’t change.

If she didn’t hate me so much already that she walked away forever.

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHTBailey

“So you can essentially have the entire basement to yourself.” Scott stuck out an arm as if to sayAll of this is yours, and I followed his gaze across the finished lower level of his house. “It’ll be like your own place.”

I gave him a smile and nodded. “Cool.”

My mom gave me a huge supportive grin, and I could tell she was happy I was trying. I’d finally realized I had no choice, so I supposed I might as well start trying to make the best of it.

Scott finished the tour of his house—ourhouse in a month—and then he took my mom and me to lunch downtown. They excitedly discussed moving—one more month and it was done—and their wedding—six months—and the honeymoon they were going to be taking (Bora-Bora), and I jammed French fries into my mouth as quickly as I could.

Because old habits die hard.

Every fiber of my being wanted to fight Scott, to fight all of this change to my life.

Instead, I breathed in through my nose and tried to believe that everything would be fine.

My phone rang while I was eating my last fry, and I picked it up because I could see it was Nekesa.

“Hello?”

“Hey, um, could you come over?” She was crying. “Like, now?”

“Are you okay?”

“Yes,” she said, and she sniffled. “No. I mean, physically I’m fine, but—Aaron and I broke up…”

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