Pride

Chapter 15

Beth needed to get out, to get away. She felt like the walls were closing in on her, as if everyone were staring at her-the clamor of the party rose in her ears and hammered at her, crushing her. She just needed to go, to think.

She slipped out the front door and then paused, drawing in deep and desperate breaths of the dry night air. She supposed she should be worried about finding a way to get home, but that seemed like a remote problem, something that would take care of itself, somehow, sometime. Right now she just breathed in the peace and quiet, and waited.

Because deep down, she knew he would come.

And he did.

“I thought I’d find you out here,” he said from behind her.

Beth didn’t turn around.

Adam touched her back for an instant and then pulled his hand away.

“I don’t know what to say,” he admitted.

Beth hugged her arms to her chest. She could think of plenty of things for him to say: how he should have trusted her instead of throwing her away; how stupid he’d been to be duped by Harper’s sadistic game… but then, hadn’t she been just as stupid? Hadn’t she fallen blindly into Kane’s arms? Or worse, not so blindly. She’d seen what he was, she’d known it deep down, and she’d ignored it. She’d wanted so badly for it to work, for Kane to be the guy she needed him to be-for her new relationship to somehow best Adam’s. It had all been more important to her than the truth.

She turned to face Adam, and almost gasped. He looked wrecked. Literally, as if a sudden storm had swept through his life and cast him on a barren shore. His eyes were hooded, his shoulders slumped.

“I-I’m sorry,” he said, raising his hands from his sides, palms up in supplication. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”

“You should never have trusted her word over mine,” Beth pointed out.

Adam shook his head.

“No. But…” He looked up at her, his eyes welling with tears. “She was my best friend.”

It was a sentiment Beth would be happy never to hear again, even in the past tense.

“And I was your girlfriend,” she retorted angrily. “Why was it so hard for you to remember that part? I loved you too. I was always there for you-how could you think I could ever do anything like that?”

“I don’t know!” he cried, his mouth twisting into a gash of pain. “I don’t know.”

He looked so miserable, so lonely, so bereft, she couldn’t stand it.

“It’s not all your fault,” she offered, a note of sympathy entering her voice. “They played you. They played us both. How were you supposed to know?”

“I should have-” His voice faltered, and she took a few steps toward him, put her hands lightly on his shoulders.

“You should have trusted me,” she said firmly. “But you didn’t.”

“Because I’m an idiot.”

“Because something was wrong between us, Adam,” she reminded him softly. “That’s why you believed them. Because you and I, we were already-”

“Don’t say that,” he protested. “Please. I…” He closed his eyes for a moment. “I loved you. And you… I thought…”

“I loved you, too.” It still hurt to say the words.

He tensed beneath her fingers.

“I still can’t believe it,” he said, his voice tight with anger. “How could anyone be so-” he choked himself off, shaking with rage.

“Adam, forget it,” she advised him.

“Forget it?” he repeated incredulously. “And how the hell am I supposed to do that?”

“You just do.” She turned him around to face her. “It was horrible, what they did,” she agreed, shivering at the memory of Kane’s arms cradling her as she cried and cried, and all the while, he’d been the cause of all her pain. “It was unspeakable, but in the end, they didn’t get away with it,” she pointed out. “We’re here, now, together. Maybe this is…” She hesitated. “A second chance.”

He grabbed her hands and pulled them to his chest. “You mean…?”

“We’ve both done some things we regret,” Beth told him. And it was true. She had shut him out, long before Kane and Harper broke into their lives. She’d stopped trusting him, picked fights over nothing. Harper and Kane had shoved them over a cliff-but they’d made it to the edge all by themselves. Maybe this was their do-over. “But maybe if we start off slow, forget the past… that is, if you still want to.”

He brought her hands to his mouth and kissed them softly. “More than anything.” He suddenly looked at his watch. “It’s midnight,” he told her with surprise. “Happy New Year.”

She looked up at him and smiled. “I think it will be.”

And then he kissed her.

“Happy New Year!” the roomful of drunken revelers shouted, throwing confetti and flinging themselves into one another’s arms.

Miranda spotted Greg across the room, making out with some random girl. She couldn’t pull her eyes away from them, Greg’s hands running through her hair, their bodies wound together. That used to be her-could have been her.

She had hated kissing Greg, she reminded herself. It had been a total drag, long and wet and boring.

But standing there alone on yet another New Year’s Eve, watching all these couples start off their year together, she wondered: Maybe her standards were too high, unrealistic. Maybe settling was better than being alone.

“There you are, Stevens!”

Miranda whirled around to see Kane, a wide grin stretched across his face, lurching toward her. He flung his arms around her and whirled her off the ground, and then, before she knew what was happening, gave her a wet and sloppy kiss. On the lips.

He had kissed her.

Kane’s lips had just touched hers.

“Happy New Year!” he shouted, slinging an arm around her shoulders. Miranda barely heard him.

He’d kissed her.

And now, she was standing there, nestled beneath his arm, leaning against him, breathing in his familiar cologne.

He was obviously drunk or high-maybe both-it was the only time he ever showed any genuine affection to anyone. But Miranda didn’t care. The alcohol, the drugs, whatever, they’d just loosened him up, cracked through that impenetrable veneer and dragged his real feelings to the surface.

He’d come to find her, at midnight-he’d kissed her. Not Beth, not any of his double-D ditzes. Her.

So he was drunk. So it had probably been a “just friends” kiss. So what? She was starting out the new year in Kane Geary’s arms, and whatever happened next, she would always have this moment, this night.

And for right now, that was enough.

Harper watched Kane and Miranda celebrate together and smiled sadly. Miranda would be so pathetically happy at even the tiny, drunken show of affection. The next day she’d call Harper and they would spend hours dissecting the single moment. And the day after that? When she found out, as she inevitably would, that Harper had betrayed her, had pushed her “one true love” into the arms of their worst enemy?

Then she’d be gone from Harper’s life, just like everyone else.

She’d just lost Miranda, even if Miranda didn’t know it yet. But she couldn’t muster up the strength to care. How could she focus on a trivial pain like that when her entire body, her whole being, was throbbing with the agony of having lost Adam? When he’d turned his back on her and walked away, she’d felt like a piece of herself had