Forgotten Rules (Rules 4)

It’s too late.

“I need you to go,” he says.

My breath catches in my lungs.

I look up at him, searching his eyes for anger, sadness—I’ll take any emotion—but what I see is… emptiness. Pure and total emptiness. It’s like I can physically feel him shutting me out. Closing himself off to me all over again.

“W-What?” I say even though I heard him loud and clear.

“You heard me. I need you to go. Get out of here.”

“Wait, Will, I’m sorry, I just…” My voice cracks. “I just wanted you to let me in.”

“This was a mistake.” He shakes his head. “Go.”

It feels as though there’s a piece of glass lodged in my throat.

“What was a mistake?” My heart swells with pain, and I manage to whisper a shaky “Us?”

He smacks his lips together, tasting the words wanting out of his mouth, fighting an impulse, fighting himself. Finally, he inhales.

“Just go. Please. I can’t deal with this right now.”

“But your mom. She needs help. I—”

“I said fucking go!” He yells so loud I jump back a step.

Will has never really yelled at me before. He’s yelled around me, but never at me. But, right now, he’s had enough. And I’m to blame. He’s right. I need to go.

So, I do.

I nod, cursing the tears forming in my eyes, and walk away. He watches as I trail toward my car. As if he’s making sure that I’m leaving. Like he doesn’t trust me anymore.

I don’t know that I trust me either.

I’m back into my mom’s car within seconds, and as I drive off, I wonder if he was right.

If this was a mistake…

Kassidy

Five days later

“Kass, so help me God, you check your phone one more time, I’m taking it away,” Morgan snaps, interrupting my obsessing with a threat I have no doubt she’ll follow up on.

“Sorry, I’m done,” I promise and power off my phone. I sure wish I could give my feelings the same treatment. How handy would that be?

Heart status: out of order until further notice.

Morgan does have a point. We’re supposed to be having a girls’ night. No boys allowed—not even Ethan. Too bad the blond intruder in my head didn’t get the memo.

It’s been five days since I put my nose where it didn’t belong. Five unbearable days since Will broke up with me—well, I think he broke up with me? Truth is, I have no idea where we stand, but if his radio silence tells me anything, it’s that we’re not in a good place. I haven’t seen him at school once. And I must’ve apologized twenty times.

He hasn’t answered any of my texts.

Not that I deserve any less.

Winter and Kendrick are still MIA, away on a last-minute trip to Canada—or so my mother say