I looked up slowly to find him glancing between the road and me and back again. “You’re the one who keeps bringing it up. Didn’t you hear Lillie and me talking just now? We’re fine. Everything’s fine.”
“You’re a fucking idiot if you believe that. She’s more in love with you now than ever before.”
The thought of that being true stung more than it should have. I never wanted to hurt Lillie. I never wanted to hurt anyone. I just couldn’t live a lie anymore, either. I refused to.
“If that’s the case, I’m sorry. But what do you want me to do? Stay single and miserable forever? Serve a life sentence of your anger because I dared totryto love Lillie? Fuck, you act like I maliciously used her for sex then left her bed cold the next morning. We were together for months. Months I tried to make it work?—”
“So, what does Phoebe have that my sister doesn’t?” he cut in.
I blinked at him, stunned by his question.
Stunned by how quickly my answer came to me: my heart.
Phoebe had my heart the moment I met her, whereas Lillie had never been able to get near it, no matter how hard she’d dug.
“I’m not answering that, and fuck you for asking it.”
“Fuck me?” His eyes widened. “Fuckme?”
“Okay, guys, as much as I love my front row seat to this show, I really think we should wait to finish it until we’re outside ofa vehicle moving at seventy miles per hour in the piss pouring rain,” Jace interrupted.
“Is this even about Lillie anymore?” I asked, my eyes narrowing at Andy, both of us ignoring Jace.
Andy cast a quick glance my way before facing forward again and taking the turn off the motorway to bring us back to normal roads. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I mean it’s not normal, this behaviour. So, what’s it really about?”
His jaw tensed, his grip on the wheel tightened, but his silence spoke volumes. Thiswasabout something else, not just Lillie anymore.
“Andy?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It does if it matters to you.”
“Leave it, Cohen.”
“Yeah, I think maybe you should leave it, Cohen,” Jace said from the back seat, but I couldn’t now. Not when I knew there was something more to this than what he’d been letting on all these months.
“Sorry. Can’t. I think it’s time we got this out in the open once and for all, don’t?—”
Andy slapped the steering wheel again, his foot falling heavier on the accelerator as he hit the A roads. “Don’t you see? Do I have to spell everything out for you? I’m scared you’re going to pull away for good now because of all this, and I’ll lose one of the best mates I’ve ever had. So, yeah, it’s about more than just my sister.”
Stunned silence descended over the car, the only sound being the racing engine as Andy navigated the dark streets and the rain beating down on our return.
He’d been this way because… he didn’t want to lose me? Is that what he was finally confessing?
“Then, why the hell have you been so hostile to me since I ended things with her? Why have you been pushing me away like this?”
He glanced out the side window, taking a moment to himself. “I guess I wanted you to try. As long as you were trying, you weren’t leaving.”
“Leaving?” I choked out. “Where the hell am I gonna go, Andy?”
He turned back to look my way before shaking his head and putting his eyes on the road again. “I know you, Cohen. I know how shame and regret and all those fucking emotions you seem to drown yourself in dominate any sense of reason or logic you have. You can’t look at Lillie anymore, let alone be around her. Where is that going to take you? Exactly where it already has. You avoid family dinners now. You make excuses to stay in your apartment and miss game night. You throw yourself into work with Dad, even when we all know being an architect is the last thing you wanna be—another thing you’re dutybound to do. What’s the next step? Moving to another town or city so you don’t have to face Lillie anymore?”
There were so many emotions racing through me, I couldn’t pick a dominant one to cling onto.
Andy shrugged. “I figured I was the last thing to keep you here. I knew you wouldn’t walk away from me on bad terms, so as long as things were wrong, you’d stick around to make them right.”
