She sighs heavily. “I’m going to go upstairs and talk it out too.”
I walk out of the sliding glass door to find him sitting in a lounge chair. His head back, eyes closed, and a cigarette between his lips. He lifts his right hand and removes it before letting out a puff of smoke. My eyes catch sight of his busted knuckles. There’s dried blood on them.
“Gonna tell me why you hit a guy because of me?” I ask.
His eyes spring open and meet mine. He doesn’t say anything, but I choose to stay instead of letting him intimidate me. I walk around his chair and fall into the one beside him. His eyes follow my movements before landing on the pool.
I remove the cork and take a big sip of the wine, trying to fight the shiver that runs through me. It’s cold out here.
We sit in silence, and I wrap my arms around my chest. “Austin thinks I love you,” I say, trying to get some kind of response out of him. Maybe shock him. I want to see the Deke I saw that night at Silence. Confused and hot as fuck.
He just laughs and takes another drag. “Austin doesn’t know you.”
I smile at myself.
“Not like I do,” he adds like the smartass he is.
The smile drops off my face. “What does that mean?”
He looks over at me. “You don’t love anyone but yourself.”
His words feel like a knife to my chest. He couldn’t be more wrong. I take another drink from the bottle and say the one thing I’ve never said out loud. Not even to the boy I wanted. “I loved Eli.”
DEKE
I laugh, shaking my head in disbelief. Of course, she did. “And you’re pissed off because he didn’t love you back.”
“You know nothing.” She growls.
“He was my best friend. I know enough.”
“You didn’t know he was fucking your girlfriend.”
My entire body stiffens, and I look over at her. She has a smug smile on her face. A look of total satisfaction. Becky wasn’t my girlfriend at the time. She was my secret. She was not only fucking me, but also David and Eli. I knew she got around, but I didn’t know she was that big of a whore. How could I have? It’s not like I followed her around everywhere or went through her phone. I believed her when she said she loved me and that I was the one she wanted to be with, but it was complicated, and we needed to wait. I hate that I believed her, but more importantly, I hate that everyone seemed to know but me.
“Guess he still picked her over you in the end,” I say to hurt her, not really knowing what she and Eli had. It obviously wasn’t sexual. I knew he liked Demi because I always saw him looking at her and secretly talking to her, but being the girl Becky is, she won.
She jumps to her feet and comes to stand before me. I look up at her and take a drag from my cigarette. She knocks it out of my mouth and to the ground before stepping on it. Then she leans forward, placing her face in front of mine.
“And if he wouldn’t have died, she would have picked him over you,” she states. “You were second best, Deke. To David. To Eli. To every other guy she’s ever spread her legs for. How does that feel?”
I want to throw her into the pool and drown her mouthy fucking ass. But what will that solve? I’m with Cole. I’m tired of having to hide bodies. I left Collins to forget the terrors and run from my demons. I backed his need for revenge one hundred percent because Eli was my friend too, and he and his dead sister deserved revenge, but look where it left me. I lost Becky. The girl I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with. I lost a friendship I thought could never be broken. And I hate it that Eli’s dead. I want to call him up. Scream at him. Punch him. And then tell him he can have her. If that’s what he wanted, I wouldn’t have fought him. You don’t fight your friends over trash.
“It must sting to know that she never loved you the way you loved her,” she continues.
And I’ve had enough. Reaching out, I grab her shirt and yank her toward me so hard that she falls onto my lap. She gasps, placing her hands on my chest to push her stiff body from mine. “How do you feel about being second best, princess?” I ask, wrapping one hand around the back of her neck and the other around her waist, not giving her the chance to get away from me. Leaning in, I whisper, “I’m sure it hurt when you found out you’ll never be her.”