For Keeps. For Always. by HALEY JENNER (top rated books of all time txt) 📗

We’re horrible people.”

“Henley.” I reach for her, but she moves out of my grasp in search of her clothes.

“You cheated. We cheated.”

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” I assure her.

I did. The truth is, Evelyn didn’t even cross my thoughts last night. Nothing else existed in my world. Nothing but Henley.

Whirling on me, hand still clinging to the sheet for dear life, her eyes widen in shock. “I knew you had a girlfriend. I knew that, and I let last night happen. I’m just as guilty as you are. I need to leave.”

Dread claws at my chest. No. This wasn’t the plan. What happened was supposed to push us closer together, not farther apart.

“What happened to for keeps? To for always?” I spit.

She turns away from my animosity. “I forgot that you belonged to someone else.”

Picking up the lamp on my bedside table, I throw it against the wall, watching it shatter into irredeemable pieces. The deafening crack stiffens her spine. “Give me a fucking break,” I sneer. “I’ve only ever belonged to you. In the same way you belong to me.”

“Except that’s not true,” she tells me calmly, turning back to me. “You’re with Evelyn, and we did something unforgivable.”

“Sometimes you have to do something unforgivable to find where you belong.”

Her head shakes. “Not like this. You don’t break someone else to find your happy ending, Brooks. It doesn’t work like that.”

“Says who?”

“Says me.”

I inhale through my nostrils, searching for calm. And my pants. Pulling them up my legs, I zip them up, leaving the top button undone as I move toward her.

She steps back.

“Please don’t cower away from me. Please don’t do that.”

Her chin wobbles.

“I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry I got so caught up in you that nothing else existed. I’m sorry that I don’t feel bad about what we did. It was the most alive and real I’ve felt since you left.”

“It was wrong,” she whispers.

“All of it?”

She shrugs.

“You regret me?” I can barely stomach the words as they find their way out.

Her head shakes, but she won’t look at me, her gaze locked on her bare feet.

“Look at me,” I demand.

She won’t.

“Look at me!” I yell.

She finally lifts her head, tears track her cheeks.

“You regret me?”

“I don’t know!” she cries. “I don’t know,” she whispers again softly.

Plopping my ass on the bed, I drop my head into my hands. “Wow.”

“I should go.”

A breath of silence.

“Home,” she clarifies.

I look up at her. “This is your home.”

Lips pinched together, she moves her head from side to side. “No. It’s not. Not anymore.”

“Stay,” I plead.

“I can’t.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

“Both.”

Retrieving her clothes, her soft sniffles follow her around my room. “My parents' marriage was a joke. It was built on lies and hurt and betrayal. I vowed I’d never be like that.”

I cannot believe she’s forcing a connection between what we shared and what her parents were. They were full of hate and spite. We were consumed by love, by the affection we hold for one another. How can she not see that?

“People make mistakes. We made a mistake. It doesn’t mean we should punish ourselves by not letting ourselves have what we want.”

She sighs, a condescending sound that slices into me. “We’re teenagers, Brooks. I can’t run away, and neither can you. This . . .” She gestures back and forth between us. “It doesn’t work right now.”

It doesn’t work.

We don’t work.

“And later?”

A shrug. That’s all she gives me. A dismissive lift of her shoulders when our hearts are bleeding all over the floor.

15

HENLEY

The flight back to London was shit.

Scratch that, it was fucking torturous.

All I wanted to do was cry. To curl up into the tiniest ball I could manage and wail.

Instead, I stared blankly at the small screen, watching horror films in an attempt to erase all the sadness pumping through my veins.

It didn’t work.

Not one little bit.

“What is going on with your phone?” my mom finally snaps. “It’s driving me to insanity, Henley. Who is trying to contact you?”

“Brooks,” I answer blankly.

“And?”

“And what?” I glance at her, the same void in my eyes that sits in my words. “I don’t feel like talking.”

Her over-plucked eyebrows pull together. “You’ve been quiet since you came home. Did something happen?”

Looking away before she could possibly read anything in my eyes, I continue to spoon cereal into my mouth. “No. I’m just jet-lagged.”

“It’s that boy,” she speculates. “I don’t want to say I told you so—”

“Then don’t.” I drop my spoon into my bowl roughly, the sound enough to make her wince as milk spills over the counter. “Please, just fucking don’t.”

“Henley,” she chides.

I walk from the kitchen, locking myself in my room and throwing the comforter over my head like I’ve done every day since I’ve been back.

I miss him.

In a way that causes a physical pain in my chest.

My cell won’t stop.

Texts.

Calls.

Addy: Yo. Call me. Why are you ignoring me? 

I don’t know? Maybe because I cheated with your friend’s boyfriend, and I’m hating on myself enough that I don’t need anyone else to add to that. 

My ringtone sounds, and I close my eyes.

“Hi,” I speak into the device.

“Henley. Fuck. Finally. What gives?”

His voice brings a fresh wave of tears to my eyes, and I stuff my face into my pillow.

“Are you there?” he pushes.

“Yes,” I mumble into my pillow.

“I can’t hear you.”

I pull my face away from the cotton. “I’m here.”

“Squirrel. Baby. Why are you cutting me out?”

Squirrel.

Baby.

“Did you speak to Evelyn?”

He sighs. “No. She won’t take my calls.”

“Oh, God.”

“Henley,” he groans. “Stop.”

“Stop what, Brooks? Stop thinking about all the ways I helped in shattering the heart of a seventeen-year-old girl? Stop thinking about how I acted exactly like the two people who made my childhood a living hell? Stop what?”

“Punishing yourself,” he answers quietly.

“It’s the least I deserve.”

We sit in silence.

“Evelyn’s heart isn’t shattered. Her pride, sure. Maybe she’s even hurt by everything. But that’s on me, not you.”

“It’s on both of us.”

“You’re not like them, Henley. Not even a little bit.”

I shrug, knowing he can’t