My text alert beeped and I checked my messages, hoping it was Aubrey telling me where to find her.
Aubrey: I’m okay. Not ready to talk about it tonight. Meet u 2morrow morning?
Things couldn’t be all that bad if she was letting me know that she was all right. That was just like her, too. She was hurt and angry but still took the time to let me know that we would talk about this. I wasn’t happy that she hadn’t waited to talk to me or charged into the bathroom to confront me, but that was because I didn’t want to spend the night with this between us. I was the one who’d caused this problem, and if this was the way she wanted to play it then, that was up to her. Although it still kinda pissed me off.
****
By the time morning had rolled around, I’d spent the night tossing and turning with all kinds of worst-case scenarios spinning in my head. What if she doesn’t come over this morning? What if she is so angry that she did something stupid last night? What if she tells me that our relationship is over? If Aubrey had been looking for a way to punish me for keeping a secret from her, then she had found a great way to do it. Not knowing what was going on in her mind was driving me crazy.
I got up and made a pot of coffee before sending Jason a quick text to make sure he wasn’t going to be back in town until later today. The very last thing I needed to add to this mess was him showing up in the middle of my talk with Aubrey. Especially since he knew what was going on and had told me that I should talk to her about it. Hell, he thought I was overreacting to the whole thing anyway and that it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, but I just hadn’t been willing to listen to reason. I just wanted to make it through the next six weeks unscathed, but now, that didn’t look like it was going to happen.
There was a knock on the door right at eight o’clock and I ran to answer it. There she was, carrying a box of doughnuts.
“Hey,” she whispered, looking at me with tears welling in her eyes as she pushed the box into my hands and walked past me inside. “I didn’t eat anything last night, and sugar sounded good this morning.”
“I can make you some breakfast instead if you’d like,” I offered, hating the thought that she was hungry because I’d made her upset.
She shook her head no in response and my expression fell. “Maybe we can go get lunch later instead?” she asked. “The doughnuts sound pretty good.”
“Whatever you want,” I promised, relieved that she had suggested lunch because that meant things weren’t as bad as I had imagined them to be.
“I’d love a cup of coffee and for us to sit down and talk,” she replied. “You have some explaining to do.”
I waved her towards the living room and grabbed coffee for both of us. After handing her the cup made just the way she liked it, I sat on the couch across from her since she’d chosen to sit on the chair where we wouldn’t fit together. I considered pulling her up and in my lap for this conversation, but the fire in her eyes let me know that, even though she was here, I wasn’t off the hook yet. Her eyes were rimmed in red, and I knew she’d spent at least part of the night crying. That knowledge killed me.
“Do you want to tell me what the hell is going on, Luka?” she asked before I even had the chance to say anything.
“Yes. Let me start by saying that nothing was going on between Josie and me. She was just helping me out with something—” I started.
“I know you aren’t cheating on me with her,” she interrupted me to say. “But you still broke our rule about being around other people. The one you asked me for because it drives you nuts when I’m near other guys. And I don’t know Josie, so there’s no way she counts as an exception the way that someone like Lexi would.”
“You’re right,” I agreed. “I should have introduced you to Josie and explained what was going on weeks ago.”
“So why didn’t you?” Aubrey asked.
I took a deep breath and started at the beginning. “You know I’m here on a hockey scholarship, right?”
Aubrey nodded her head and looked at me questioningly, having no idea where I was going with this. “Yes,” she answered.
“That’s why I picked Blythe in the first place. Because between playing hockey and my grades, they offered me a full ride, which meant my parents could use my college savings to help out my brothers and sisters instead,” I explained. “And then, this summer, I put all that at risk by pushing myself too hard and hurting my knee.”
“I thought it was better now though,” Aubrey said.