"You want me to hold your hand?"

"No. That won't help. My ex… Ross. He was a friend of hers. She wasn't happy about that."

"Oh."

"Oh?"

"You stole her boyfriend."

"No. Maybe. She had a boyfriend at the time." Maybe Lily did have a thing for Ross. She made him sound so great when she described him. I thought it was because she wanted to set us up. But she might have wanted him for herself. "It was more than that. I leaned on her more than she could handle."

He pulls me closer. "Tell me about it."

"Don't you want to celebrate?"

"I want to hear this."

Okay. I want to tell him. But I'm not about to bring down the mood with my ugly past. Not if it doesn't matter to him.

I run my fingers over his neck. "It's a long story."

"I've got all night."

I motion to the door. "This place closes in an hour."

"Damn. I forgot that this ice cream shop is the only place in the world where we can have a conversation. Fuck. We better hurry up."

"Asshole."

"You can come over."

Maybe. I want to. But—"I have an early class."

"We can go to your place. Sleep."

"Can we?"

He laughs. "Fair enough." He turns me so we're face-to-face. "You don't have to say shit. I meant it, Iris. The past is the past. But I want to be someone you can lean on. If you want to talk—"

"I do. I just… I haven't really talked about this with anyone."

His eyes stay soft. Understanding.

"Lily was always the pretty, athletic one. She still is. She's in a volleyball league. She's good. I was more—"

"The Star Wars geek?"

"Yeah. I looked up to her. I thought she was the coolest person in the world. She was smart too, but she didn't apply herself. If she wasn't into a subject, she'd half ass it, whereas I'd study even harder, bring home straight As."

"You seem like the type."

"I always got the grades. I did well in college. But then I graduated and I hit a wall. I was lucky. I got a job pretty fast. I was excited about the future. Then… then I got my GRE scores back. They were terrible. I'd bombed. It was the first time I really failed at something."

"That must have sucked."

"Yeah. But I wasn't ready to face the possibility of failure. I couldn't stand how badly I wanted to go to grad school. It hurt. So I told myself I didn't want it. I told myself I didn't need the GRE. I tried to convince myself that my boring administrative job was what I wanted."

"Did it work?"

Tags: Crystal Kaswell Inked Hearts Romance
Source: readsnovelonline.net