Kaitlin shook her head furiously. “She loves you. I know she does.”
I suddenly felt like I’d run a marathon. I was tired of trying. Tired of lying to myself and trying to make something true that wasn’t. I couldn’t do it anymore. Not even for Kaitlin. “She loves my brother. He doesn’t deserve her, but if she really needs help, he’s the one she’ll listen to.”
Aiden’s voice startled both Kaitlin and me. “That’s not true.”
He walked into the kitchen looking pale and rumpled. He stuck a bowl and spoon in the sink and then turned to Avery’s mom. “Kaitlin,” he said in a strangled voice. His eyes filled with tears, and he couldn’t get any more words to come out of his mouth, but the “I’m sorry” was obvious.
I think Kaitlin wanted to be mad at him, but she couldn’t do it with him looking so pathetic. “I’ll forgive you if you forgive me,” she said.
Aiden nodded miserably and then blushed as he tried to wipe away the evidence of his tears.
Kaitlin stood and gave Aiden a hug, then said she needed to go. As she walked out the door, she gave me one last pleading look. “Please don’t give up on her. She needs help, Grayson. I’m trying, but no one has ever helped her as much as you did.”
The door clicked shut, and I just sat there at the table, overwhelmed by Kaitlin’s visit. I didn’t want to let her down. If Avery really was that depressed, then I wanted to help, but I just didn’t know what else I could do for her.
Aiden plopped down in a chair across the table from me and met my eyes. “Kaitlin’s right about Avery.”
I was surprised. Aiden and I hadn’t exactly been on speaking terms for the last few months.
“You changed her,” he admitted grudgingly. “At first I was so mad at you for it. One lunch with you and suddenly she looked different. She was hanging out with other people, going to basketball games and parties. It was like I didn’t even recognize her, and I hated you for ruining her.”
I realized I was grinding my teeth when my jaw started to hurt. “If she changed, it was only for the better.”
Aiden looked down at his lap. “I know,” he said quietly. “You can hardly even notice her anxiety anymore. The old Avery never could have gone off on me the way she did on our birthday. She’s stronger because of you. Healthier.”
Aiden gulped, and his voice shook as he forced the next words from his mouth. “Until we fought at the condo, she was happier than I’d ever seen her in our whole lives. You did that.”
I scoffed. “Yeah, right. If I made her so happy, then what happened? She’s rejected me a thousand times over again and always for the same reason—you. She loves you.”
“You are so blind.”
“You have no right to call me blind when you missed her feelings for you for seventeen years.” I felt my anger boiling up inside me. It pissed me off to hear him saying these things when I knew he was the one she wanted. “You better have been clueless, anyway, because I’d hate to think you realized what you were doing to her all those times you broke her heart.”
Aiden glared at me, but he was just mad at himself for that one. “So we’re both idiots,” he said. “Doesn’t mean she didn’t fall in love with you.”
I couldn’t take it anymore. I flew to my feet so fast I sent the chair crashing to the floor behind me. “Everything we’ve ever done together has been about you!” I yelled, slamming my fists down on the table. “All the time we spent together was because of you! She didn’t hang out with me because she wanted me. She was trying to get over you! I’m just a damn science fair partner to her!”
Aiden rose to his feet and met my volume with a shout of his own. “Why do you think I went to the condo on her birthday? It wasn’t because I thought she would sleep with just anyone. I knew she was in love with you, and I couldn’t let you hurt her!”
He rolled his eyes when I glared at him. “Are you really going to blame me for thinking you could? How many countless girls have you made fall for you and then tossed away when you got bored with them?”
“I didn’t mean to make them all fall for me,” I said defensively.
Aiden shrugged. “They still fell. Every single one of them. Avery’s no different.”
I started to argue, but Aiden glared at me so hard I shut my mouth.
“You think I don’t know her well enough to see it?” he hissed. “You’ve been her friend for two-and-a-half months. I’ve been her friend her whole life! I know everything about her. I know what she’s going to do before she does it. I know what she actually means when she says something and she’s just trying to be nice. I even know all of her different laughs and sighs. I know every single facial expression she has, and the way she looks at you? Trust me. Avery is crazy about you.”
Aiden glared at me again like he was hoping I might explode into a pile of ash. I didn’t think he could make me any madder, but he had some freaking nerve. “If that’s true, why the hell should it piss you off?”
Aiden’s face flushed deep red, and he came around the table to stand toe to toe with me. I was quite a bit taller than him, but it didn’t stop him from getting right up in my face. “Because she should be mine!” Aiden screamed. “She was mine! Yeah, I really, really screwed up, but I could have fixed it. I knew by the end of school that first day that I’d made a mistake. I was going to dump Mindy and apologize, but you’d already swooped in like a damn vulture! Then you did what you always do.”
“Excuse me?” I asked incredulously.
Aiden glared at me as if he loathed me more than was humanly possible. “Don’t act like you didn’t! You took her out. You made her popular. You kissed her. For a couple weeks you were perfect, caring, charming Grayson Kennedy until she fell for you. Then you got bored and dropped her like every other girl you’ve ever dated, and now she’s so depressed, her mother was over here begging you to fix it!”
My vision went red. I threw my fist so fast Aiden never saw it coming. I hit him so hard he flew back and landed on his butt. He blinked up at me in shock, while blood ran down his face. I was sure I’d just broken his nose, but I was too furious to care.
“I didn’t get bored and drop her, you asshole! I got rejected! I asked her to be my girlfriend, and she said no. She said it wouldn’t be fair to me because she’d only be doing it hoping it would make her forget about you. She fed me some stupid line about how I deserved someone who could actually care about me, and that wasn’t her.”
Aiden stopped worrying about the blood running from his nose and gaped up at me. “What?”
“She loves you, you undeserving bastard. If anybody fell for anybody in the last few months it was me.”
I sank back into my chair at the table. Now I understood why Avery had seemed so tired after she exploded on Aiden. Being this angry was exhausting both physically and mentally.
“I love her, Aiden.”
There it was. I’d been refusing to admit it for weeks, but there was no use denying it anymore.
“You . . .” Aiden’s face paled, and I don’t think it was from blood loss.
I shrugged helplessly. “She’s depressed right now because of you. It started the night you busted in on her birthday. I tried for weeks to cheer her up. I tried everything I could think of, but nothing I did helped. She didn’t want me. She never has.”
My head hurt too bad to deal with this anymore. “I’m going back to bed.”
Avery
I knew as part of the grieving process I would get here eventually, but I hadn’t meant to fall apart so badly. Depression runs in my family. I’d had problems with it before, and so I told myself I wouldn’t let it overwhelm me. But that’s the thing with depression. Sometimes there is no controlling it. Sometimes it sneaks up on you.