Ugly Love(22)
Author: Colleen Hoover

I turn away from him because I’m embarrassed at how angry his words are making me. I’m embarrassed it’s hurting me like it is, but everything with Miles hurts. It hurts because I know how good our good moments are, and I know how easily the bad moments would go away if he would just stop trying to fight this.

“Tate,” he says with remorse.

I want to rip his voice from his throat.

His hand meets my shoulder, and the car isn’t moving anymore. “Tate, I didn’t mean that.”

I push his hand away. “Don’t,” I say. “Either admit you want me for more than just sex, or take me home.”

He’s quiet. Maybe he’s contemplating my ultimatum.

Admit it, Miles. Admit it. Please.

The car begins moving again.

“What did you expect would happen?” Cap asks, handing me another tissue.

When Miles and I arrived back at the apartment complex, I couldn’t bear riding up that elevator with him, so I took a seat next to Cap and let him go up alone. Unlike the hard exterior I try to show Miles, I completely break down while spilling all the details to Cap, whether he cares to hear them or not.

I wipe my nose again and drop the tissue, adding it to the pile next to me on the floor. “I was being delusional,” I say. “I told myself I could handle it if he never wanted more. I guess I thought if I let him take his time, he’d eventually come around.”

Cap reaches around to a trash can at his side and places it between us so I have somewhere to toss my tissues. “If that boy can’t see what a good thing he could have with you, then he ain’t worth your time.”

I nod, agreeing with him. I do have a lot more important things to do with my time, but for some reason, I feel as if Miles can see what a good thing he has with me. I feel like he wishes he could make this work between us, but something bigger than him or me or us is holding him back. I just wish I knew what it was.

“Have I told you my favorite joke yet?” Cap asks.

I shake my head and grab another tissue from the box in his hands, relieved at the change in subject.

“Knock, knock,” he says.

I didn’t expect his favorite joke to be a knock-knock joke, but I play along. “Who’s there?”

“Interrupting cow,” he says.

“Interrupt—”

“MOO!” he yells loudly, cutting me off.

I stare at him.

Then I laugh.

I laugh harder than I’ve laughed in a long damn time.

Chapter twenty-two

MILES

Six years earlier

My dad says he needs to speak to us.

He asks me to get Rachel and meet him and Lisa at the dining-room table. I tell him okay, that there’s something we need to

speak to them about, too.

Curiosity flashes in his eyes but only for a brief second. He

thinks about Lisa again, and he’s not curious anymore.

His everything is Lisa.

I go to Rachel’s room and tell my everything that they want to

speak to us.

We all sit down at the dining-room table.

I know what he’s going to say. He’s going to tell us he

proposed. I don’t want to care, but I do. I wonder why he didn’t

tell me first. This makes me sad but only a little bit. It’s not

going to matter after we tell them what we have to tell them.

“I asked Lisa to marry me,” he says. Lisa smiles at him. He

smiles at her.

Rachel and I aren’t smiling.

“So we did,” Lisa says, flashing her ring.

So.

We.

Did.

Rachel gasps quietly.

They’re already married.

They look happy.

They’re looking at us, waiting for a reaction.

Lisa is concerned. She doesn’t like that Rachel looks so upset.

“Honey, it was spur-of-the-moment. We were in Vegas.

Neither of us wanted a big wedding. Please don’t be mad.”

Rachel begins crying into her hands. I wrap my arm around

her and want to console her. I want to kiss her reassuringly, but

my father and Lisa wouldn’t understand it.

I need to tell them.

My dad looks confused that Rachel is so upset. “I didn’t think

either of you would mind,” he says. “You’re both leaving for

college in a couple of months.”

He thinks we’re mad at them.

“Dad?” I say, keeping my arm around Rachel. “Lisa?”

I look at both of them.

I ruin their day.

Ruin.

“Rachel is pregnant.”

Silence.

Silence.

Silence.

DEAFENING SILENCE.

Lisa is in shock.

My father is comforting Lisa. His arm is around her, and he’s

rubbing her back.

“You don’t even have a boyfriend,” Lisa says to Rachel.

Rachel looks at me.

My father stands. He’s angry now. “Who’s responsible?” he

yells. He looks at me. “Tell me who he is, Miles. What kind of

guy knocks a girl up and doesn’t have the balls to be with her

when she tells her own mother? What kind of guy would let a

girl’s brother be the one to break the news?”

“I’m not her brother,” I say to my father.

I’m not.

He ignores my comment. He’s pacing the kitchen now. He

hates the person who did this to Rachel.

“Dad,” I say. I stand up.

He stops pacing. He turns and looks at me.

“Dad …”

I’m suddenly not as confident as I was when I sat down to do

this.

I’ve got this.

“Dad, it was me. I’m the one who got her pregnant.”

My words are hard for him to swallow.

Lisa is looking back and forth between Rachel and me. She

can’t swallow what I’m saying, either.

“That’s not possible,” my father says, trying to push away all

the thoughts that are telling him it is possible.

I wait for it to process.

His expression changes from confusion to anger. He looks at

me like I’m not even his son. He’s looking at me like I’m the

guy who knocked up his new stepdaughter.

He hates me.

He hates me.

He really hates me.

“Get out of this house.”

I look at Rachel. She grabs my hand and shakes her head,

silently pleading for me not to leave.

“Get out,” he says again.

He hates me.

I tell Rachel I should go. “Just for a little while.”

She begs me not to go. My father walks around the table and

shoves me. He pushes me toward the door. I release Rachel’s

hand.

“I’ll be at Ian’s,” I tell her. “I love you.”

Those words are obviously too much for my father, because his

fist immediately comes at me. He pulls his hand back and looks

almost as shocked as I do that he just punched me.

I step outside, and my father slams the door.

My father hates me.

I walk to my car and open the door. I sit in the driver’s seat,

but I don’t crank the engine. I look in the mirror. My lip is

bleeding.

I hate my father.

I get out of my car and slam the door. I walk back into the

house. My father rushes to the door.

I hold my palms up. I don’t want to hit him, but I will. If he

touches me again, I’ll hit him.

Rachel isn’t at the table anymore.

Rachel is in her room.

“I’m sorry,” I say to both of them. “We didn’t mean for it to

happen, but it happened, and now we have to deal with it.”

Lisa is crying. My father hugs her. I look at Lisa.

“I love her,” I say. “I’m in love with your daughter. I’ll take care

of them.”

We’ve got this.

Lisa can’t even look at me.

They both hate me.

“This started before I even met you, Lisa. I met her before I

knew you were with my father, and we tried to stop it.”

That’s kind of a lie.

My father steps forward. “The entire time? This has been

going on the entire time she’s lived here?”

I shake my head. “It’s been going on since before she lived

here.”

He hates me even more now. He wants to hit me again, but

Lisa is pulling him back. She tells him they’ll figure it out. She

tells him she can get it “taken care of.” She tells him it’ll be

okay.

“It’s too late for that,” I tell Lisa. “She’s too far along.”

I don’t wait for my father to hit me again. I rush down the

hallway and go to Rachel. I lock the door behind me.

She meets me halfway. She throws her arms around my neck

and cries into my shirt.

“Well,” I say. “The hard part is over with.”

She laughs with her cry. She tells me the hard part isn’t over

yet. She tells me the hard part is getting him out.

I laugh.

I love you so much, Rachel.

“I love you so much, Miles,” she whispers.

Chapter twenty-three

TATE

I miss you so much, Miles.

Thoughts like that are why I’m drowning my sorrows in chocolate. It’s been three weeks since he brought me home. It’s been three weeks since I’ve laid eyes on him. Christmas came and went, but I barely noticed because I worked through it. Two Thursday game nights that Miles didn’t show up to. New Year’s came and went. Another semester of school began.

And Tate still misses Miles.

I take my chocolate chips and my chocolate milk and walk to the kitchen to hide them from the person knocking at the apartment door.

I already know it’s not Miles, because the knock at my door belongs to Chad and Tarryn. They’re the only friends I’ve made here, as busy as I am, and they’re only my friends because we’re in study group together.

Which is why they’re knocking on my door right now.

I open it, and Chad is standing in the doorway sans Tarryn.

“Where’s Tarryn?”

“She got called in to cover a shift,” he says. “She can’t make it tonight.”

I hold the door open further to let him in. As soon as he steps over the threshold, Miles opens his apartment door across the hall. He freezes when our eyes meet.

He holds me captive with his stare for several seconds until his gaze slides over my shoulder and lands on Chad.

I glance at Chad, who looks at me and arches an eyebrow. He can apparently tell something’s up, so he respectfully retreats into my apartment. “I’ll be in your room, Tate,” he says.

That’s nice of Chad … offering to give me privacy with the guy across the hall. However, announcing that he’ll be waiting in my bedroom probably wasn’t the respect Miles wanted to be shown, because now he’s stepping back inside his apartment.

His eyes drop to the floor right before he closes his door.

The look on his face sends pangs of guilt straight to my stomach. I have to remind myself that this was his choice. I have nothing to feel guilty about, even if he is misjudging the situation he just opened his door to.

I close the front door and join Chad in my room. The silent pep talk I tried to give myself did nothing to ease the guilt. I sit on the bed, and he sits at the desk. “That was weird,” he says, eyeing me. “I’m a little scared to leave your apartment now.”

I shake my head. “Don’t worry about Miles. He has issues, but they aren’t my issues anymore.”

Chad nods and doesn’t question me any further. He opens the study guide and lays it across his lap as he props his feet up on the bed.

“Tarryn already made notes for chapter two, so if you get three, I’ll cover four.”

“Deal,” I say. I scoot back against my pillow and spend the next hour preparing notes for chapter three, but I have no idea how I manage to concentrate, because the only thing I can think about is the look that crossed Miles’s face right before he closed the door. I could tell I hurt him.

That makes us even now, I guess.

After Chad and I exchange notes and answer the study questions at the end of every chapter, I make copies on my printer. I realize three people divvying up three chapters and sharing answers is cheating, but who the hell cares? I never claimed to be perfect.

Once we’re finished, I walk Chad back out. I can tell he’s a little bit nervous after having seen the look on Miles’s face earlier, so I wait for him to get on the elevator before I close the apartment door. To be honest, I was a little nervous for him, too.

I walk to the kitchen and begin making a plate of leftovers. There’s no point in cooking, since Corbin won’t be home until late tonight. Before I’m finished adding food to my plate, the front door opens with a knock.

Miles is the only one who opens the door and knocks at the same time.

Calm down.

Calm down, calm down, calm down.

Calm the hell down, Tate!

“Who was that?” Miles asks from behind me.

I don’t even turn around. I continue making my plate of food as if his being here after weeks of silence isn’t filling me with a storm of emotions. Anger being the most prominent one.

“He’s in my class,” I say. “We were studying.”

I can feel the tension rolling off him, and I’m not even facing him. “For three hours?”

I spin around and face him, but the expletives I want to scream get caught in my throat when I see him. He’s standing in the doorway to the kitchen, gripping the door frame over his head. I can tell he hasn’t worked in a few days, because his jaw is lined with a thin layer of stubble. He’s barefoot, and his shirt has risen up with his arms, revealing that V.

At first, I stare at him.

Then I yell at him.

“If I want to screw a guy in my bedroom for three hours, then good for me! You aren’t at all entitled to have an opinion about what goes on in my life. You’re a jerk, and you have serious issues, and I don’t want to be a part of them anymore.”

I’m lying. I really do want to be a part of his issues. I want to immerse myself in his issues and become his issues, but I’m supposed to be this independent, headstrong girl who doesn’t cave just because she likes a guy.