Pride (28 page)

“Adam, what does she
mean
?” Beth asked again, her voice taking on a tinge of panic because, already, she knew. The look on Adam’s face, the look on Kaia’s—maybe Beth had always known. Maybe that’s why she hadn’t asked, hadn’t let herself wonder why Kaia had suddenly appeared in—and, just as inexplicably, disappeared from—his life.

“You slept with her, didn’t you?” Beth asked harshly, her tone brittle.
She
felt brittle—as if a single touch could shatter her into a million pieces.

He said nothing.

“You slept with her while we were still together,” Beth insisted now, with less of a question in her voice.

Still, Adam stood there infuriatingly mute.

“Say something!”

He grabbed her hands, but this time she whipped them away, covering her face. “Just tell me it’s not true.”

“I can’t,” he finally admitted.

Her body turned to stone—starting with her heart.

“Beth, can’t we just—you said we could make a fresh start—”

“Get away from me,” she told him in a husky voice.

“I can’t just leave you, not like this,” he protested, approaching her. She backed away, almost tumbling backward over the uneven ground.

“I said, get away from me!” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, trying to stop herself from exploding. Not from yelling or flying at him in a rage, both of which she would have been happy to do if she’d been able, but from literally exploding, from letting the hurt and anger rip her to shreds from the inside out.

“Now, Adam.
Go
.”

And so he did.

Beth stumbled blindly down the long driveway toward the dark, empty street below. She supposed that she could find someone to give her a ride home, but she preferred to walk. It would take her all night, trudging for miles along the empty highway, but that was all right. She needed the time to think, to plan.

Because this wasn’t like before, Beth realized, when Adam had tossed her out with the garbage in what she now realized was a hypocritical fit of jealous rage. She wasn’t broken. She wasn’t distraught.

She was angry. And the anger made everything clear.

Harper. Kane. Kaia. Adam. They’d all betrayed her. They’d played their little games with her life, kicked her back and forth like a soccer ball, destroyed her, again and again.

So what was she supposed to do now? Go home and cry? Gorge herself on ice cream and whine about how the world was ever so unfair? Blunder through life finding someone else to trust, only to be crushed and stomped on once again?

She didn’t think so.

The old Beth might have cried her way home. And, like a nice girl, a good girl, she would have wept, and waited, and wept, until finally, she’d moved on. She’d get past it.

But not this time—not this Beth.

She walked home dry-eyed, her fists clenched, her mind racing.

Because this time, she wasn’t going to get past it.

She wasn’t going to get over it.

She was going to get even.

about the author

 

Robin Wasserman enjoys writing about high school—but wakes up every day grateful that she doesn’t have to relive it. She recently abandoned the beaches and boulevards of Los Angeles for the chilly embrace of the east coast, as all that sun and fun gave her too little to complain about. She now lives and writes in New York City, which she claims to love for its vibrant culture and intellectual life. In reality, she doesn’t make it to museums nearly enough, and actually just loves the city for its pizza, its shopping, and the fact that at three a.m. you can always get anything you need—and you can get it delivered.