CHAPTER426
“Goddammit, Sophie!” Arrick’s temper snaps too, his tone and anger stopping me as he grabs my shoulders with both hands and hauls me back to him. He spins me to face him and I’m rendered silent with the outburst.
“I wish it felt wrong! Maybe if it had then it would fix my own goddamn head and solve something. The problem is it felt too fucking right. Is that what you want to hear? Because kissing you felt …” Arrick trails off, confusion over his face, while I’m still crying quietly, madness dissipating fast and replaced with complete sorrow and heartbreak at what he’s doing to me. I search his eyes but he’s closing down on me, reverting to deadpan calm and reeling it all in.
“Felt what?” I almost beg him, face to face in the darkness. He keeps looking anywhere but at me, avoiding my eyes, avoiding the way I am trying to focus on him while he tries to let this go. Grabbing his wrists to get him to face me properly.
“This is exactly what we shouldn’t be doing ... This is what confuses things.” Arrick makes a move to walk around me, but I step sideways, blocking him confrontationally and repeat my question, stopping him. He gazes at me like I am physically causing him pain.
“Felt what?” I say it more forcefully, staring at his downcast face as he frowns at the grip I have on his forearms. He frowns at me pleadingly, with a face that just begs me to leave this alone, but I can’t. I need to know what he was going to say; it’s ripping my heart apart, and I want to know what the end of his sentence was.
“Felt what?” I repeat firmly, tears trickling down my face hopelessly. Arrick drops his chin again, looking down at his hands before he finally meets my eyes, completely lost.
“Felt like I was kissing the girl I should have been kissing all along… Happy? Because this solves nothing, Sophs. Natasha is still going to be crushed, I’m still going to be an asshole who hurts someone I care about, no matter what, or who, I choose. This will still be the complicated mess it was yesterday and nothing, except my inability to not kiss you, will have changed.” Arrick sidesteps me. Dismissing me so easily, despite everything he just said. “Go home and get changed, you’re freezing and soaked through. You’re going to get sick.” He sounds so closed off and harsh, frosty, considering what he said was pretty much admitting to wanting to be with me.
“You can’t just leave it like this.” I cry after him as he moves to cross the road toward his mom’s house.
“Yes, I can. This is not why we’re here and it can damn well wait until we get home. I told you that we were not the priority.” He’s walking off, obviously trying to put distance between us and that age-old anger crashes out impulsively.
“Fuck you. Walk away then, see if I fucking care!” I croak after him desperately, Arrick turns mid-stalk across the street, throws me an angry look and turns back to keep walking.
“Grow up, Sophs. I’ll see you tomorrow. This isn’t happening so get used to it.” He ducks around the side of the tall bushes out of sight as he hits his mother’s lawn, and I’m left standing alone, bubbling with rage and heartbreak all intertwined, hating the receding figure of him. A million emotions rumble to the surface; a mix of elation, heartbreak, and sheer furious rage, colliding into one heavy mess.
“Fuck you.” I mouth quietly under my breath, knowing he probably didn’t hear it but needing to say it anyway. I turn and head up the street to my own long drive, tears still falling, yet my chin up and stubborn determination on my face, that I won’t let him affect me anymore tonight."
