MADDIE
“Please,” I asked, desperate for Alec to stay out all night with me.
I didn’t want to go home to face Oliver because he was surely back by now and he would scream at me for the next three hours about where I had been and about how I couldn’t be so stupid to let another Redwood athlete into my fucking heart.
Spencer had utterly destroyed me, ripped me to pieces, thrown daggers right into my heart. How could I let another one of Oliver’s close friends get with me? How could I be that sister, who listened to her brother’s warnings and continued to defy him?
“He’ll kill me if I don’t bring you home tonight,” Alec said, pulling up my driveway and cutting the lights. When he shut off the car, he curled an arm around the back of my seat and turned toward me, then pushed some hair off my face. “You need to talk to him anyway.”
Swallowing hard, I stared through the windshield. My heart was beating so hard against my chest, my mouth drying. I didn’t want to even think about what had happened today, but Oliver would bring it up without any sympathy.
“Okay,” I whispered. “I’ll go.”
“Promise me you’ll be at school tomorrow,” Alec said, resting his forehead against mine. “I know you didn’t want this … us … to be public, but I want to finally be able to be with you. I don’t want you to be ashamed of us. I’m not going to hurt you.”
That was what Spencer had said too, but he’d fucking annihilated me.
But Alec wasn’t Spencer, and I had to keep reminding myself of that. It was wrong to ever compare the two of them, but still … I couldn’t seem to help it. Spencer had been my only boyfriend before Alec, and he had fucked me up.
“I promise that I’ll be there,” I said, finally able to get the words past my lips.
After Alec planted a fat, wet kiss on my mouth, I said good-bye and dragged my feet all the way up to the front door. I pulled my key out of my purse and prayed that Oliver was sleeping because I didn’t want to talk to him right now.
Once I took a deep breath, I stepped inside the house. Almost as if he had been waiting for me, Oliver stood in the foyer with his arms crossed over his chest and a grim look in his eyes—a look that I only saw during hockey matches.
“Who were you with?” he asked.
“None of your business.” I pushed past him and headed toward the kitchen to grab something to eat before I retired to my bedroom for tonight.
It had been such a long night, and I didn’t know if I would be able to handle another moment of it.
Oliver grabbed my elbow just as I entered the kitchen. “Who were you with?”
I ripped myself away from him. “None of your business, Oliver.”
“You can’t date Alec,” he said to me, ignoring everything I had said earlier about not wanting him to baby me anymore.
Mom and Dad might not have been around as much as normal parents, but that didn’t mean he needed to become a parent to me. I had enough problems, and it wasn’t like he was actually grown up enough to handle me. He still partied endlessly with his friends.
“I will date whoever the hell I want.”
“Not Alec,” he said again through gritted teeth. “That’s who you were out with tonight, wasn’t it?”
“Why ask if you already know the answer?” I said, finally glaring at him now. “You will never be Mom and Dad! I know that they’re off doing God knows what, but you will never be able to be them for me! Stop acting like you control every aspect of my life!”
“I’m not trying to—”
“Yes, you are! And I’m sick of it. God, stop trying!”
Suddenly, Oliver got quiet.
Quieter than he had ever been.
He was the loudest, most annoying guy I knew, but he had never been one to get this terrifyingly quiet. Not even when Spencer had broken my heart. He had gone on nothing but a rage back then.
“I’m just trying to look out for you,” he said. “Redwood is—”
“Fucked up?” I interrupted. “Yeah, I know it is.”
“Maddie,” Oliver said, “I—”
“Stop it!” I found myself yelling. “I don’t want to listen to it anymore. I’m so done with this. I’m so done with everything. All I want is a normal life, where I can date whoever I want to date without feeling so bad about myself.”
Instead of facing my brother and having a civil conversation with him, I ran up to my bedroom and slammed my door, then locked it so he wouldn’t be able to come in at all. I just wanted to be alone tonight, to think through everything that had happened.
Tears were streaming down my face. Part of me felt like I was overreacting. Oliver was just being a big brother. But so much of my life had been controlled by him and by Spencer when I had been dating him. Alec made me feel so free, and that was what I wanted.
Freedom.