Anywhere But Here by Stephanie Hoffman McManus Read Free Book Online Page A

considering you did paint her tits on the wall for the whole fucking world to see.”
    He’d never once brought up the painting before. I always suspected he knew, but we didn’t talk about her. Ever. And seeing a black and white painting of something was not the same as seeing it in real living color. Fucking trust me on that one. I stepped up to get in his face. “There’s a fucking difference, so how closely did you check to confirm the likeness?” I growled.
    He shoved me back. “Seriously, dude? What the fuck? I already told you I didn’t see shit, and I didn’t need to. I steered her over there and her reaction confirmed it for me.”
    “Why the hell would you do that?”
    “Because you’re both so fucking hung up on the past, but neither one of you wants to admit it.”
    I scoffed. “The only thing that girl is hung up on is hating my guts.”
    “ That girl couldn’t hate you if she tried, but she sure as hell is trying.”
    “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” She hated me alright. It was all in the eyes.
    “I know that she’s still fucking inside you man, that you’ve never gotten her out, and after today, I’d bet money it’s the same for her. All that hate you’re seeing, I don’t think it is hate. I think it’s pain and anger, and you can ask the girls on this one, but seven years seems a long time to carry around that amount of hurt for someone that doesn’t mean anything to you.”
    “Leave me out of this.” Marcy lifted her hands in a gesture of surrender. “I don’t want any part of your man drama.”
    Laurel had no such reservations about butting in. “I agree with D. She definitely has some strong feelings, and while they’re not positive, fluffy feelings, that kind of passion only comes from one place. For you to have hurt her that bad, she had to have loved you a hell of a lot, and it’s my experience love like that burns itself inside of you in a way you can’t just put it out.”
    “We were fucking kids. What the hell did either one of us know about loving anything?” The words tasted bitter in my mouth. Denying that I’d loved her was like denying everything I was. If I hadn’t loved her so fucking much, I wouldn’t have done what I did. Not that, I’m sure, she would ever see it like that. Didn’t matter that I regretted it, that now I wished I had made different choices. My world was small and dark back then, and she was at the center of it, the only bright spot in all that darkness. At seventeen, I didn’t see a whole lot of options ahead of me, but the one thing I’d known for certain was that I’d do anything for her, give up anything for her. So I did. I gave up everything and we both hated me for it.
    “Right. So then you won’t mind if I go try and catch up with her and tell her the truth.”
    Squeezing my fists into a tight ball, I held myself in check. He was pushing, but I had to make one thing very clear. “You’re not going breathe a fucking word to her about what you think you know.”
    He snorted disapprovingly. “Why not? It’d clear shit up real fast. You want her to stop hating you? Let me tell her what really happened.”
    “No,” I ground out through a clenched jaw.
    “Yeah, tell me again about how you didn’t really love her.”
    I took a step back. “Just leave it alone, D. If she wants to hate me, let her.” What difference would it make now? “I’m out. Make sure you guys lock up.”
    It was Laurel’s voice I heard as I pushed my way through the door and into the night. “What the hell happened back then?”
    Just before the door swung shut behind me, Derek answered her. “So much.”
    That about summed it up.
    Fate, chance, whatever you wanted to call it, almost eight years ago it intervened in the lives of two kids who never should have crossed paths, and played a cruel joke on them. Sometimes I thought back to Ms. Renner’s English class and wondered what would have happened if she’d never assigned that