Not Your Fault (14 page)

I let him sleep, both because he looks so freaking cute when passed out but also because if he’s well-rested, then there’s a good chance he’ll hang out with me for my shift at the gym tonight. I may have spent the whole night and day with him, but I’m not ready to separate from him just yet.

After meticulously crawling out of bed in a way that made as little movement and noise as possible, I retrieve last night’s outfit from the dryer and change back into it after a quick shower. I have gym-appropriate clothes in my locker at work, so arriving there in date clothing won’t be a big deal. Especially since my date attire isn’t exactly slutty. Susan would
tisk tisk
me if she saw how conservatively I dressed last night.

With luck not on my side, there’s no spare toothbrush in Kris’s bathroom, so I use his toothpaste and my index finger and brush my teeth as best as I can. Then I retrieve my purse from the top of Kris’s dresser and dig around for my compacted hairbrush. Using the built-in mirror over the top of the dresser, I attempt to untangle my messy hair without staring at the reflection of the gorgeous man sleeping in the bed behind me. My efforts are futile though, because soon I am watching him in the mirror with a lazy smile on my face, my hand haphazardly slapping the tiny hairbrush against my head in a half-assed attempt to brush out the tangles.

The brush drops from my hand, crashing into the dresser with a loud crack. I jump and try to grab the brush, stopping the noise before Kris wakes up, but in my frantic movements, it falls into the slightly opened top drawer. I reach my hand inside while watching Kris, hoping I haven’t woken him. He stays asleep and my hand digs through the drawer, feeling for my brush. Instead I get handfuls of sock after sock, until my fingers land on a piece of paper.

Now, I know I shouldn’t grab the paper and pull it out. I know I shouldn’t dig through Kris Payne’s sock drawer and look at whatever he’s hidden in here. But…I do it anyway.

My heart catches in my throat at the sight of a folded square of cotton candy pink paper with Hello Kitty’s face along the border. I remember this paper. I had a whole notebook full of it and I used it throughout my sophomore year. I used to write Kris love notes on this stationery then fold it up very tight and pass it off to him when we met in the hallways between classes. I can’t believe he kept one of them all these years. My fingers tremble as I unfold the note, thinking that I must have written it in a hurry because I hadn’t folded it the fancy triangle way I was so fond of in high school.

I glance at Kris to make sure he’s still asleep, and then I read the unfolded paper.

Chills cover my body and my entire face goes numb. The words blur into each other as I read each poorly scribbled hate-fueled sentence. My hands tingle and my mouth goes dry.

Kris didn’t keep a love letter from me. He kept the letter that told him to leave me.

Anger and sadness fight for control of my emotions and I can’t bring myself to finish reading the note. I do glance down at the bottom, where my name is signed with a “Fuck you” as the closing words. I blink away the tears in my eyes and bring the paper closer to my face as I study the way someone else signed my name.

I’ve seen my name written this way before, but this isn’t my handwriting.

It’s Nathan’s.

Chapter 19

He answers on the first ring.

“You. Fucking. Bastard.” My words are venom. I clasp the phone to my ear so tightly that if it doesn’t shatter between my fingers, I’ll be surprised.

“Excuse you?” Nathan says.

 “You fucking heard me,” I say as I pace back and forth in Kris’s room.

“That’s right, Delaney,” Nathan says, his voice dripping with a condescending tone. “Keep saying curse words because you can’t think of anything clever enough to say without them.”

“You’re right, Nathan. I think I will keep saying them.” I hold the phone in front of my mouth like a walkie-talkie. “Fuck. You. Fuck everything about you, and fuck the years we spent together and fuck any nice thing I ever said to you. I take it all the fuck back.”

Kris, now fully awake in the aftermath of my yelling, throws the comforter off him and jumps out of bed, mouthing the words,
What’s going on?
and
Are you okay?

All I can do is shake my head while my mouth opens and closes in frustration as I listen to the bastard on the other end of the phone babble on about something stupid. “Aww, did Delaney get her wittle heart bwoken?” Nathan coos into the phone. “Did mister murdering ex-boyfriend screw you over again?”

I let out a noise that sounds like a frustrated laugh. He
so
did not just say that. “Never speak of Kris that way again,” I say with a seething hatred in my voice. This gets a concerned reaction out of Kris but I hold up my hand to keep him quiet. “I found your note, you fucking coward. I know what you did to me, to make Kris leave me. I know your secret now.”

“Delaney—” Nathan interrupts as a truckload of nonsensical words flies out of his mouth in an attempt to talk himself out of the situation. “I did what I had to do to get you away from that prick.”

“Shut the fuck up,” I tell him. Kris hardens his jaw and runs his hands through his hair. Anger radiates off him, but can tell he’s not angry with me. I look Kris in the eyes as I finish my call to Nathan. “You are the worst person I know,” I say over Nathan’s frantic excuses and apologies. “You better hope you never see me again.”

I end the call with the press of a button, which doesn’t feel nearly as satisfying as slamming down a receiver would feel. I have the urge to throw my phone across the room in frustration, but I know better. Kris wraps his hand around my wrist and softly tugs the phone from my grasp, setting it down on the bed as if he knows what thoughts are running through my head.

Kris says his words slowly. “So, not only did you read that horrible letter, but you know the person who wrote it?”

Anger consumes me so much that I can’t even be bothered to feel embarrassed that he knows I went through his sock drawer. I don’t care about any of that—the only emotion flowing through me is the desire to get revenge. Kris brushes the hair out of my face and tucks it behind my ear.

“Delaney…you’re scaring me.”

“Huh?” My head snaps up at the realization that he just said something.

Kris lowers his head, his eyes studying mine. “Who wrote that letter?”

My lips slide to the left as hesitation stops me from giving him the answer. Kris’s features become dark and concerned. “Do I know him?”

I shake my head. “I don’t think so. He went to school with us but he wouldn’t have been in your crowd.”

He shakes his head as if deep in thought. “How do you have his phone number? That was ten years ago. And why would he do that? Who the fuck would ever do that?”

I take a step forward and wrap my arms around his waist, pressing my head into his chest. The warmth of his body and the feel of his hands wrapping around me brings me comfort. I mumble words just loud enough for him to hear, “His name is Nathan. And he was my boyfriend until a few days ago.”

I didn’t return to school until an entire month had passed after Tyler’s funeral. Numerous phone calls from the principal and threats to fail me and make me repeat my junior year had done nothing to change my mind. As long as Kris walked the hallways of Mixon High School, I did not want to go back there.

Eventually though, I did. When I look back on those memories now, they are hazy images that have been repressed so long that it’s almost as if they never existed in the first place. I was a girl in mourning, an empty shell of a human being who used to be vibrant and full of love. But my brother was dead and my boyfriend was missing in action and the whole world felt like it had collapsed, combusting in on itself in the center of my soul.

I could not feel happiness. I could not feel anything but pain.

At least I felt something.

A short while after I had returned to school, once the condolences from teachers with sad faces had stopped, and after people who never really were my friends quit finding me in the hallways to tell me they were sorry for my loss, Nathan showed up. I knew him from my life of attending the Mixon school district, but apart from occasionally being lab partners in chemistry, we weren’t friends.

This memory isn’t foggy. Nathan and I had relived it many times over the years, but now as I think about it in Kris’s bedroom, I see the events in a different light. I was walking down the long corridor that led to the parking lot after school one day, a walk I used to make with Kris but lately had been walking alone. Nathan, tall and still chubby, appeared at my side and tapped me on the opposite shoulder, causing me to look the wrong way at first. When I did look over at him he smiled sheepishly.

“Sorry, I couldn’t help myself,” he said.

I smiled, humoring him and his stupid prank.

“It’s nice to see you smile again,” he said, adjusting the straps on his backpack as we walked. He swallowed, looking from me to the ground and back at me again. I could tell he wanted to say something, but he was too nervous to say it. I was used to seeing that look on everyone else, so said it for him.

“You don’t have to mention Tyler. It’s fine. I’m going to be okay.”

He gnawed on his bottom lip and nodded at me as we walked. “I know you’ll be okay. That’s not what I was going to say.”

“Oh?” I asked, feeling a little relieved that someone wanted to talk to me about something other than my tragic life. “What’s up?”

After no less than two minutes of walking toward our cars and gathering up every ounce of intestinal fortitude Nathan could find, he finally said, “I was wondering if you’d like to go on a date with me?”

“A what?” I blurted out in confusion. That was the last thing I had expected him to say.

“Sorry, um…it doesn’t have to be a
date
, date. I just-” He sucked in a breath and said the rest of this thoughts in a quick burst of words. “You’re just a really sweet girl and you’ve been through a lot and I was wondering if you wanted to hang out with me and just kind of forget about everything else. You know, maybe take your mind off things.”

I came to a dead stop in the middle of the parking lot. Students muttered crap under their breath about how I was being inconsiderate since they almost crashed into me. Nathan’s cheeks went as red as Rudolph’s nose as I watched him, trying to make sense of what he’d just said. “You want to go on a date with me?”

He nodded.

“You know I’m dating Kris Payne, right?” My stomach twisted into knots the second the words fell out of my mouth. No, I wasn’t dating Kris Payne. I mean, he never officially broke up with me but where the hell was he? He was gone. And because of that, he wasn’t my boyfriend anymore.

“Really?” Nathan said with just as much of a confused voice as I had used. “I heard y’all…broke up.”

This is where I should have realized something was off. I should have wondered how Nathan knew that fact and I should have questioned where he had “heard” that from. Because the rumors hadn’t spread through school yet—no one had any idea that Kris and I hadn’t spoken since Tyler died.

I blink and find Kris watching me with those concerned auburn eyes. Many more memories flood into my mind now. Nathan, who suddenly became my best friend at school—who was suddenly by my side after every single class, eager to walk me to my next one. I did take him up on the date offer, after the tenth time he had asked me. And three and a half years later, all of his persistence paid off when I kissed him on the lips on a Ferris wheel ride and told him that yes, I would finally be his girlfriend.

“I was never happy with Nathan,” I say, mostly to myself. “I dated him because he was there and he was nice to me, but I wasn’t in love with him. He took you from me.” My jaw shivers from the rage coursing through my veins. “I can’t even imagine what my life would have been like with you instead. I should have been with you.”

“I know, baby.” Kris sighs. “I should have never believed that fucking note.” He glances to the floor where I had dropped the note before I called Nathan. We look at it and then he bends and picks it up, ripping it into pieces and crumpling it in his fist. The creased piece of pink paper that changed our lives forever is now just a worthless ball of trash.

“It was all a set up,” I say, focusing on the present with Kris and not allowing myself to think about all of those years I spent with Nathan. “He wrote that letter and made you leave me. Then he was up my ass constantly, every day, being super nice and working hard to win me over.” I shake my head. “I can’t believe he would do that.”

“I can,” Kris says.

I lift an eyebrow. “Why do you say that?”

His hand cups my face, tilting my head up where he places a kiss on my lips. “Because who can blame anyone for being in love with you?”

I let out the breath I’d been holding and place my hand on his chest. “Stop saying sweet things when I’m pissed off. I need to be angry right now.”

He chuckles and shakes his head. “Don’t misunderstand me—I’m fucking livid. I’m going to find this guy and make him pay. But for now…” His hands slide around my waist and with a shove of his body, we fall to the bed. I let out a small yelp of surprise as we land on the soft pillows, Kris’s hands holding me as if his life depended on it. He slides his tongue up my neck, sending shivers down my body. “I have a lot of time to make up for,” he says in my ear. I feel his erection grind into me as he presses his body on top of mine and my hands wrap around his neck. “Maybe you should call into work today.”

Chapter 20

I wake up the next evening with the scent of man-ish deodorant in my face. My eyes open and I’m face to armpit with Kris’s hairy, yet pleasant-smelling underarm. “Blegh!” I shove him, but only end up pushing my body away from his since he weighs more than I do. “How did we end up like this?” I muse, gesturing to our tangled naked bodies as Kris begins to wake up.