Loving War(36)

“Nope. I just wanted him to call Aunt Margaret and Uncle Paul and send his condolences. I give up.”

My fingers start running through her hair, and she snuggles her head into a different spot on my chest.

“Can I ask something and you not get mad?” she asks softly, her voice thick with hesitation.

“Sure,” I say, figuring it’s probably something about Rain.

“Why aren’t you the best man in the wedding? And why do things seem so tense between you and Dane?”

Well, it’s inadvertently about Rain.

I start to tell her the whole damn story, but I can’t. I know I can’t. As much as I want to do it, it would destroy my relationship with Rain. But what scares me the worst is the fact that it could shred what I have with Tria, too.

“Do you really want the answer to that?”

I can’t blatantly lie to her, because I don’t want to.

She gets quiet for a moment, and her body gets a little more rigid in my arms. But she has to lead this conversation. I can’t.

“Because of Rain,” she says simply. I maintain my silence—guilty by omission—and she blows out a breath that has me worried. “Did you… I mean… Do you love her?”

I thought I did. In fact, I was convinced Rain Noles was the only girl in the world for me. It was as simple as that. She was the only person I tried to be different with. And I tried real damn hard to be just as fucking nice, sweet, understanding, and patient as Dane.

Then I met Tria. I don’t know what’s going on with us, but I don’t feel like I have to try to be someone else with her. In fact, she doesn’t make me try at all. She doesn’t expect me to be like Dane because she prefers the way I am. It’s… damn, it’s nice.

“I’ll be honest, Tria. I used to think I was in love with her, but I wasn’t. I couldn’t have been. I know I love her, but it’s not the kind of love I once thought it was.”

I’m starting to realize you can’t love someone that doesn’t love you the way you are. I was just Rain’s go-to best friend—the one she trusted but never loved in that way.

Tria relaxes against me, and I bask in the way she curls her arms around me, holding me as though she’s afraid this moment might vanish if she looks away. I’ve never had anyone be this way about me.

“Good,” she tells me, and I grin.

“You must like me a little if you’re starting to ask those kinds of questions.”

She smiles against my chest before placing a delicate kiss on my sternum.

“I guess I do like you a little, but I…” Her voice trails off as she sits up, her eyes meeting mine with a great deal of seriousness. I keep my arm around her waist, not willing to give up touching her.

“Kode, I’ve spent most of my life feeling ostracized because of everyone’s awe for Rain. My mom never treated us differently, but I could still tell that she was extra careful with Rain. As a child, you don’t understand that, and it causes you to be bitter. Then at school… things were bad for me. And the Sterlings and Rain were a massive part of that.”

A wave of nausea rolls over my stomach, and I immediately feel guilt for the first time about how shitty we all treated her in school. We were stupid kids, though. Well, I was just an uncaring ass, but the others were just kids.

“I can’t go back and undo the way we treated you, Tria.”

She nods slowly, her eyes falling down to my bare upper half to where the sheet meets my flesh at my hips.

“I know. But that’s not the point I was making. I’ve spent a lifetime feeling like the world chose Rain over me—that she was so much better than I was. I worked twice as hard in school, college, and in life as she did. She makes it seem effortless to do exactly what she wants to with her life and obtain undying loyalty and love from amazing people. I have to work for those things, and yet it seems like I can’t ever achieve the things that come so easily to her.”

She pauses, and my lips tighten. I never realized how much we have in common.

“I’m not bitter—not anymore. I was for a really long time. When I found out Eleanor wasn’t really my mother, I was crushed, and no one was there for me besides the woman who had played my mother all these years. My dad—the only person who ever chose me over Rain—cut me out of his life for finding out the truth. He was too cowardly to face the disappointment in my eyes, and too stubborn to realize that I would love him anyway. I thought after people found out that they would possibly look at me the way they looked at Rain, maybe realize I wasn’t the spoiled girl with the perfect life, and then they could see me. But no one did.”