It made sense. It all made sense. His stupid danger-junkie risks, the distance I’d felt from him. 

I kept staring, freezing up. My brain wouldn’t work properly and my hands, my fucking hands, shook. If I didn’t get out of here, I was going to break down and have a full-on attack right in front of his perfect ex.

I ran for the door and yanked it open. The rain poured down in huge, lashing sheets that soaked me to the skin in a matter of moments. But I felt nothing. I was numb.

Which was why I didn’t feel his hand on my arm until he yanked me back to him. “Everly!”

“Get your hands off me!” Shock at how roughly he was holding me made me shout. “Who the fuck do you think you are?”

“I’m trying to tell you it was nothing. It’s not what you’re thinking, okay? Nothing happened. She just came here. Fucking blindsided me.”

“I know what that’s like!” I yelled in his face. 

“I was wrong about what happened.” His fingers loosened and his eyes drifted away from mine. He went somewhere inside of him. “With her. I had it all wrong.”

The tenderness in his voice hurt the most. The sympathy for this woman who had supposedly stomped on his heart. How could he sound like this if he...

If he...

I almost choked on my tongue. “You still love her.”

He snapped back to me. “That’s not true.”

“Jesus fucking Christ, Gabe, why are you jerking me around like this? Be a normal guy for once!”

He looked pissed. “I thought you understood. I’m not normal at all. I thought we cleared that up.”

“Right.” I crossed my arms over my chest, hugging myself. I was freezing, but I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of seeing me shiver. I wasn’t going to let him see me as fragile and needing help. He was going to see me as I was.

Fucking livid.

“Right,” I said again. “It’s quite clear. You’re a danger junkie who gets off on stringing along the girl next door while secretly meeting with his famous ex. Was I just a way for you to feel like you were getting away with something? Did telling me you loved me raise the stakes high enough for you to get off on your little game?”

“Christ, Everly, cut the shit! You’re spinning out.”

“No, it all makes sense.”

“For the fucking millionth time, you’ve got it all wrong.”

“Really? Tell me everything is okay, then. Tell me you haven’t been pulling away from me. Tell me you haven’t been taking stupid risks these past few weeks. Tell me I’m wrong about that.”

His nostrils flared. “I’m not fucking cheating on you with fucking Noelle. Christ, you know how I feel about her.”

“You just told me you were wrong about her,” I pointed out. 

He clapped his hands over his face and dragged them down, distorting his beautiful face into a tragedy mask. “You refuse to accept a single thing I’m telling you, so how the fuck am I supposed to tell you everything is okay?”

His words hit me like a punch in the gut. “So we’re not okay?”

“I’d say fucking not!” he exploded. “Jesus, with this hellacious night—you know, Everly, you knew who I was from the beginning. Unlike you, I never hid my identity. I’ve been open from the beginning.” I took a step back, stung. He threw up his hands. “Yeah! I am who I am and if you can’t handle it, go find someone else. Someone normal.”

I couldn’t get a full breath in my lungs. I was not going to have a panic attack, dear god not here, not like this. “You don’t mean that,” I pleaded. I wanted to take it all back. I was scared. I was hurt. I was— “You don’t mean that.”

He waved his hands, looking for all the world like he was washing them of me. Of us. “Yeah. I do.” His voice was hollow, empty. “Go home. Study. Pass your boards. Go live your life. Be normal, Everly. Without me.”