She Deserves Better

Knox's POV

The bonfire had been going for two hours and I had spent most of it watching Ember from across the crowd without making it obvious that I was watching her.

I was good at that. Years of learning how to stay alert in a room full of people without letting anyone see that you were doing it had made me very good at that. My teammates thought I was relaxed and having a good time. My coach, who had stopped by to congratulate the team on the win, thought the same thing. Nobody could tell that my attention had barely left one person all night.

She was standing with Kimberly and Jessica near the edge of the bonfire, holding a cup she had not been drinking from, laughing at the right moments but not really there. I knew what not really there looked like on a person because I spent a significant portion of my own life performing a version of it. The difference between Ember doing it and me doing it was that she had no idea she was doing it at all.

She has been off since the game. Since she dropped that bottle.

I did not know what had happened in the stands. I had scored and turned to the crowd and found her face automatically, the way I had been doing all game without fully understanding why, and the look on her face in that moment had stopped me cold. Not excitement. Not the regular noise of a game well played. Something else entirely — pale and shaken and trying very hard to look normal.

I filed it away and told myself I would find a moment to ask her later.

That moment came when Hilary Davis walked over.

I was talking to two of my teammates when I saw Hilary cut through the crowd toward where Ember was standing. I knew that walk. Hilary walked like that when she had decided to make someone's evening significantly worse and was enjoying herself before she even started. I excused myself from the conversation without explaining why and started moving.

I got there in time to watch Hilary back Ember against the cooler table, reach for a bottle of juice, and lift it with the clear intention of pouring it over her. I stepped in and took the bottle out of Hilary's hand before she could, tilting it back toward her slowly and deliberately.

"Knox." Hilary's whole face changed. She dropped the attitude immediately and replaced it with something softer, something she had practiced in front of mirrors. "I was just having a little fun."

"Find somewhere else to have it," I said.

She stepped closer, dropping her voice, trailing one finger along my arm like that was going to change anything. "I know you only sleep with someone once. But I think you know I'm worth making an exception for. Don't you think I'd make the perfect girlfriend for you?"

I looked at her. "No."

She blinked. People did not usually say no to Hilary Davis that cleanly.

"Especially," I added, "after what you just tried to do to Ember."

Something shifted in Hilary's face at that. The practiced softness disappeared and what replaced it was something older and harder. She leaned in close enough that only I could hear her.

"I know who you are, Knox," she said quietly. "I know exactly what you are. And I know that you can never love a human without killing them. So think about that the next time you want to play hero for the poor girl."

She walked away before I could respond.

I stood there for a moment with the bottle still in my hand, watching her go, and I did not let anything show on my face. That was the most important thing right now — not letting anything show. Because if even one person at this party saw how deeply that sentence had landed, there would be questions I was not ready to answer.

I turned around and Ember was gone.

***

I found her on the far side of the building, around the corner from the bonfire crowd, sitting on a low concrete wall with her coat pulled tight around her and her eyes fixed on the middle distance. She looked up when she heard my footsteps and the expression on her face moved through surprise and then something harder before it settled into nothing at all.

"Can we talk for a minute?" I said.

"About what?"

I sat down on the wall a few feet from her, leaving space between us, and looked at her properly for the first time all evening. Up close she looked more tired than she had from across the crowd. There were shadows under her eyes and a tightness around her mouth that had not been there two days ago.

"I wanted to ask if you were okay," I said. "After the other night."

She let out a short laugh that had nothing funny in it. "You're asking me that."

"I know how it sounds."

"Do you?" She turned to look at me fully and there was a heat in her eyes that I had not seen before. "You kicked me out of your apartment in the middle of the night, Knox. On my birthday. After—" She stopped. She pressed her lips together. "You didn't even explain. You just handed me my coat with shaking hands and told me to get out. And now you want to know if I'm okay."

I did not say anything. There was nothing I could say to that which was not either a lie or a truth she was not ready to hear yet.

She took my silence as confirmation of everything she already thought about me and turned back to stare at the dark.

"You don't have any right to ask me that question," she said. "You don't get to kick someone out and then check up on them like you care. Pick one. Either you care or you don't. You don't get to do both."

She was right. That was the worst part — she was completely right, and I had no defense that did not involve telling her things she was not ready to know yet. So I sat there and I took every word because that was the least I owed her.

"I'm sorry," I said. "What I did that night was wrong and I know it."

"Sorry doesn't explain anything."

"No," I agreed. "It doesn't."

That seemed to frustrate her more than an argument would have. She stood up from the wall and pulled her coat even tighter, and I could see her getting ready to leave — doing that thing she did where she gathered herself up from the inside before she walked away from something.

"You know what the worst part is?" she said, not looking at me. "I actually thought you were different. For about five minutes, I genuinely thought you were different from every other guy who has ever treated me like a footnote. That's on me. I should have known better."

She picked up her bag and turned to go.

I don't know why I said it. I had told myself on the walk over here that I was going to keep this simple — check that she was okay, apologize for the way I handled the other night, and leave. That was the plan. I had a very clear plan.

"How are things with Ethan?"

She stopped walking.

The question just came out of me, pulled by something I had not fully made sense of yet..

She turned around slowly, and the look on her face was not the anger I expected. It was something more complicated than anger or exactly the wrong question at exactly the right time, and that either way everything about this conversation had just changed.