Circle of Friends, Part 2 Read Online Free PDF Page B

humiliation or regret, but there was only a second of rightness.
    She grinned. “Wow. That came from nowhere. I know that’s not part of our agreement, but there we are. You’re amazing, Dev. I don’t know why you’re not already married with a bunch of kids. Maybe I got lucky. Whatever the reasons, we’re together and I love you.”
    Until that moment, she’d wondered how she would know what love felt like. Now she knew—she was as certain about her feelings as she had ever been about anything in her life.
    He stared at her as if she’d become a stranger. “You can’t.”
    Not exactly the response she would have picked, she thought, trying not to give in to sudden fear. “Well, I do.”
    â€œNoelle, stop it. I don’t want to talk about this.” He took several steps back. “You don’t know what you’re saying. It’s the sex.”
    â€œIt’s more than that,” she said, annoyance taking the place of fear. “You don’t get to dictate my feelings.”
    Dev didn’t know what kind of game Noelle was playing, but he had to get her to stop. This was not supposed to happen.
    â€œWe had a deal,” he told her, knowing it was a completely stupid thing to say.
    â€œI broke the rules. Sorry.”
    It was more than the rules, he thought grimly. There were reasons.
    She couldn’t love him. People didn’t love him. They wanted him like his women, or hated him like Jimmy, or left him like his parents, but they didn’t love him.
    He walked around her and left the kitchen. She caught up with him in the hallway.
    â€œYou can’t pretend this didn’t happen,” she said as she grabbed his arms. “You can’t make my words go away.”
    â€œI can try.”
    â€œDoesn’t it mean anything to you?”
    He didn’t want to look at her, but he couldn’t help himself. He stared into her eyes, into that uncomfortable mixture of pain and hope and knew he’d made a fundamental mistake where she was concerned. Noelle was so damn together, he’d forgotten she wasn’t used to playing his kind of game. The one where no one got involved. No one got hurt.
    â€œIt means you don’t really know me,” he said quietly. “If you did, you could never claim to love me.”
    â€œThere’s no claiming,” she snapped. “I mean it. I know what I’m talking about. And I do know you. You’re good and kind and smart and caring. You’re everything I’ve ever wanted in a man.”
    Her words cut him down to the bone. There wasn’t blood, but there should have been. Gallons of it. Maybe then, if he shed enough out of guilt, he could make it all right.
    â€œYou don’t understand,” he told her. “I’m not that man. I’ve screwed up everything important. Everything. My father left because of me. He told me himself. He wanted to go away so I wouldn’t be like him. I didn’t know what he meant so I didn’t know what to change. And Jimmy.” He closed his eyes, which only made things worse. Suddenly he could see his kid brother and hear every word of their last, angry conversation.
    â€œJimmy was the most important person in my life,” he said, staring at her. “I was determined to be the best brother, best parent, best everything for him. But it didn’t work. Nothing helped. I couldn’t get him to care about school or college or getting a job. He wouldn’t go to class in high school, he partied, he ran with some pretty bad kids. He got kicked out his junior year. Did he tell you that? Did he tell you he’d tried to set the gym on fire?”
    Noelle stared at him, her eyes wide. She slowly shook her head.
    â€œObviously he never graduated. I hounded him until he got his GED. When that arrived, he told me he was done with me. Not that he moved out—that would have meant taking responsibility