Lost King Piper Lennox (ready player one ebook .TXT) 📖

“I’m blocking you.” I meet his gaze. My knees feel like they’ll buckle, but I balance my weight against the car and keep going. “No more texting. No phone calls. Don’t show up at my house anymore. Don’t drive by my work. Don’t talk to me, ever again.”

Tears gather in my throat, but for once...they aren’t for him.

They’re for me.

I’ve wasted so many years.

“We’re finished, Callum. Not just broken up as a couple, but as friends. As anything.”

I expected myself to whisper this part, or sob, but it sounds like lines I’ve rehearsed to perfection. Maybe I have.

He stares at me for a long time. The bottle keeps clunking. Our breath clouds under the street lamps peppering the lot, swept away in the wind.

Finally, he straightens and clears his throat.

“I knew this would happen.”

The only thing that confuses me more than his sentence is the way he says it: almost laughing.

“Long time coming,” I nod, because I guess that’s one thing we can agree on. None of this should blindside him.

“Not this.” Darkly, he smiles and shakes his head, stepping around his bumper so we’re face-to-face. “You,” he corrects, “falling for that piece of shit all over again.”

“That’s not what this is.” I crack my knuckles against my legs, wondering if Marcus can see us from the front desk inside the rink. I hope so. Callum getting closer to me, even with a full parking space still between us, sets off alarms in my head.

“So it’s a coincidence, then, that you went on a trip with him,” he says, “and the day you get back is when you want nothing to do with me anymore?”

“I’ve wanted nothing to do with you for a long fucking time, Call, let’s make that clear.”

“Was that revenge bullshit even true?”

Shame floods my veins. I know either answer—a lie, or the truth—won’t matter, so I nod. “Yeah,” I say quietly, “it was.”

“But it’s not now.”

My teeth brand my bottom lip until I taste copper, that faint draw of blood that makes me think of Theo on his kitchen floor. The default memory isn’t his bathroom, anymore. When I think of him, I think of how he makes me feel now. Not seven years ago.

When I think about that whole stupid plan I had, it feels like a lifetime since it last felt right.

“Did you fuck him?” He caps the bottle and pitches it blindly to the side. The wind sends it skittering all the way to the rink building. “Is he your little boyfriend now? Huh? Ruby got what she’s always wanted, so to hell with anyone else. To hell with the guy who literally picked her sorry ass up off the ground. To hell with the person who’s loved her since fucking high school.”

“You don’t love me.” Now it’s my turn for a sarcastic, poison-coated laugh. “You think the way you treat me is love? And yeah, you were there for me back then. I was grateful. That’s exactly why I didn’t do all this sooner, even though I should have: I thought I owed you.”

I motion to him, this vague sweep of my hands that can’t even begin to encompass how much he’s changed. When I realize that’s impossible, I drop them back to my sides and sigh.

“But I don’t. I never did. That’s how love works—you give whatever you can and it’s automatically enough, even when things are uneven.”

The tears that crept into my throat come back, but I don’t wipe them away when they fall. I want him to see them. To know my broken heart isn’t over him, this time.

“I gave you everything, Call. But it wasn’t enough.” I nod at him, then down at myself. “And it wasn’t enough because—this? Us?” My chest deflates, the final words pushed out of me by sheer exhaustion. “It’s not love. It never was.”

The smirk leaves his lips.

I watch the darkness in his face fade, and the flash of heartbreak in his eyes.

For that one second, I see who he used to be.

No: who I wanted him to be. Who he could have been, and, one of these days, might still become.

But it won’t be with me.

“Bye, Callum.” I grab the handle behind me and pivot fast, climbing in.

Past behavior makes me think he might stop me—yank open the door as I put on my seatbelt; stand behind my bumper when I try to back out—but he stays where he is, and watches me go.

31

“That’s it? ‘Okay?’”

I adjust my Bluetooth and grab the last deck chair in both hands, taking care not to twist my back as I lift it, like I did with the others. As I heft it down the concrete steps from the deck to the storage area, I tell Dad, “What do you want me to say?”

His words catch on themselves. “I don’t know, it’s just...you usually have a lot more to say. Loudly. And with cursing.”

“You want me to yell at you for not texting your grown son on Thanksgiving?” This is actually a jab at myself, because I still hate that it bothered me. “It sucks and all, but it sounds pretty stupid when I put it in context.”

“Theo....” My name fades into a sigh. I hear him scratch his beard. “Your age doesn’t make it okay for me to do that. And, you know, let’s be honest: I’ve been doing it way before you were an adult.”

Wow. My little reverse-psychology trick actually worked.

“I’ll do better.” He sighs again, a shorter one like that’s that, everything’s set in stone.

“It’s not just for