Free Heartless (Keeping Secrets) by J. Roman Page A

standing him up to plan our date. That was good. I didn’t want any family tension. I looked up at Tommy’s perfect face. How was I ever going to break it off with him? He knew all my games, all my tricks. He knew me like no one but Kevin did. Funny how he’d managed to get under my skin and through my bullshit in such a short period of time. I needed to get out of here.
    “I’m not feeling so good,” I said after a ten-second pause. “I think I’m just going to head home.”
    “Let me drive you,” Kevin and Tommy said in unison.
    “No thanks. I don’t think I’m going home right away.” I dropped Tommy’s hand and waved at Kev. “I’ll see you guys later.” I shuffled toward the parking lot. Both of them caught up with me at the same time.
    “You want to go to my house?” Kevin asked. I paused. There was a thought.
    “Is Tina going to be there?” I asked.
    Kev shook his head. “Nah. She’s got Pilates and then some chick-lunch thing that she goes to with her girlfriends until after four. We can just chill in my rooms.”
    “I want to come too,” Tommy said. I forced a chuckle out.
    “You know, the whole point of going was so that I could get some sleep. I didn’t sleep well last night.” Translation: at all.
    “We won’t bug you,” Kev vowed. Tommy nodded in agreement. Great. Now they were ganging up on me.
    “I really want to be alone,” I said. I meant that. I absolutely did not want to be around anyone right now. My brain was fried.
    “We’ll leave you alone for as long as you want,” Tommy promised. Crap. Now I wouldn’t have any choice. I nodded tiredly, too exhausted to argue.
     
     
    I ENDED up riding with Tommy in case he got lost as he followed Kevin. I sat in the passenger seat and curled into myself. I just wanted to sleep. Correction, I wanted to sleep next to Tommy in bed and pretend that large parts of yesterday had never happened. I watched as my gorgeous new boyfriend opened and closed his mouth several times before deciding that I wasn’t ready to talk. At least the boy was smart for a jock.
    “I love you,” I said, leaning my forehead against the cool plate of the window. It was too early in this thing we called a relationship to be having to deal with my fucked-up baggage, so I would spare him what I could. We hadn’t even decided if our relationship could survive high school. Forget whether it could survive the other stuff outside Erwin’s hallowed halls of learning.
    “I love you too, J.”
    I realized it was too soon to be repeating the words to each other in every conversation we had, but seventeen seemed old enough to make those sorts of decisions, and falling in love was as easy as falling down on ice. I wasn’t entirely secure in “us” yet, but I knew that we could head into fairly devoted territory very quickly.
    “I shouldn’t be dating you,” I said. I hadn’t meant to say it out loud, I swear. It was like I had a puppeteer and he’d shoved his hand up my ass to move my mouth. We weren’t far from Kevin’s house, and we wouldn’t have much time to really talk.
    He gripped the steering wheel until his knuckles whitened. “What happened between yesterday and today that has you so strung out? You were happy to date me yesterday. What happened after you went home?”
    “Nothing. I just started thinking about it. This really won’t work long term. I mean, you’re you and I’m me, and we come from two different worlds.” The sentence probably made zero sense to him, but it made 100 percent sense to me.
    “What the fuck is wrong with you? You tell me you love me and then try and break up with me. What is that?” His jaw developed an angry tick.
    “I’ve fucked a lot of people,” I said flatly. “I’m cruel, deliberately so, most of the time, and I have no clue how to have a healthy relationship.”
    “We can work through that.”
    “I’m a slut,” I admitted. “I’ll spread for anyone.”
    “Not anymore,” he said confidently.