’m still angry.”
She lets him pull her into a hug, and I can almost feel the relief coming off Rhett.
“I can live with that.” When he pulls back he glares at me. “What’s this about you teaching my sister to kiss?”
Oh fuck.
“And that’s my queue to hit the road,” Marcus says. He looks at Mia, “I love you, babe. You know that right?”
“Yeah, love you too, Marcus.”
Then he looks at me. “Good luck, bro. It was nice knowing you.”
I shake my head, and I can’t help but laugh as Jaxson runs after Marcus. “Yo, wait up.”
“And then there were three of us,” I mumble to myself. I wait for Rhett to shut the front door before I say, “I love Mia.” I realize it doesn’t quite have the same ring to it after Carter and Marcus just said the same thing. “I don’t mean as a sister. I mean it in that all-consuming way. Mia’s the one I want to go to bed with, and wake up with, and do everything with. I love your sister, Rhett.”
“Shit,” Rhett says, and I’m not sure whether it’s a good shit or bad shit. “Dude, I want to say yes -” My heart fucking stops as Rhett shakes his head, placing his hands on his hips. “I swear, if that was a proposal, even I would consider saying yes, but you’re telling the wrong person how you feel. It’s not up to me.”
“Mia knows how I feel about her. I didn’t want to start a relationship without getting your blessing.”
Rhett holds out his hand to me, and for the first time tonight I manage to take a deep breath. I shake his hand, and I start to feel really emotional when I see approval in his eyes.
“I’ll leave you two to talk,” he says, then walks over to Mia. “We’ll talk some more tomorrow. I know you’re disappointed in me and I’m sorry.”
She nods, giving him a trembling smile as he presses a kiss to her forehead.
I wait until he closes the bedroom door behind him before I take a step towards Mia.
“I always thought this would be the happiest moment of my life,” she whispers, and when our eyes meet, and I see such intense pain shining from them, it cripples me. It feels like the ground is ripping open beneath my feet.
“Don’t do this,” I beg, walking right up to her. I take her face in my hands and lean down to kiss her, but she turns her head away and gives me her cheek.
Taking hold of my wrists, she pulls my hands away from her face, and whispers, “When you taught me how to kiss it was a dream come true. I had the biggest crush on you, and there you were, kissing me. Did you know that I held on to my virginity for you? I wanted you to have all my firsts.”
Tears start so silently fall over her cheeks, and when I reach for her face, she takes a step back. I close my eyes because this hurts too fucking much.
“Josie paid Connor to sleep with me. After you all left, I met him in the cafeteria. He was funny and charming. He was on the football team, and an obvious catch by the way girls threw themselves at him. He actually made me feel special. We dated for three months. I really liked him and he helped fill a small part of the gaping hole you all left in my life.”
I don’t want to hear this, but I force myself to listen.
“I gave him my virginity.” Her voice cracks just like my heart, and she clears her throat before going on, “As soon as he had his orgasm, he got up and got dressed. It was the first time I had sex. I had no idea what to do afterwards. I guessed getting dressed was the next logical step, but then he said I was only a fuck. I was just another warm hole for him to get off in. But hey, he’d be sure to tell all of the guys on the team that it only took a few dinners to get me on my flat on my back.”
I close my eyes as the pain fills every inch of me.
“You all get to say you’re sorry, and that’s it. You get to go back to your lives, but I can’t. I have to live with the memory of being used.”
I press the palms of my hands hard against my eyes, trying to breathe past the pain.
“There’s nothing I can say that will make this better.” The words burn their way up my throat and I know I’m minutes away from puking.
“I’ll tell Rhett tomorrow,” she whispers. “Logan,” she waits for me to look at her and I can’t keep the tears back any longer. “I love you. It feels like I’ve loved you all my life. It’s hard to accept that the worst thing that happened to me is because of something the best thing to happen to me did. I need time to wrap my mind around that. As much as I love you, I don’t know if I can get past that. I need time to process it all. Can you give me time?”
I suck in a breath of air, and it still feels like I’m suffocating. Slowly, I lean down and closing my eyes, I press a kiss to her trembling lips. It’s a quick kiss. A I’m-so-fucking-sorry-I-hurt-you-kiss.
When I pull back, I whisper, “I’ll never forgive myself. You deserve better than me, and I hope you find it. You’re going to make some lucky bastard very happy one day.”
I walk away from her, knowing I said the same thing after I kissed her the first time. It’s because I’m right back where I was then, with Mia being out of my reach.