Renna Rose Lancaster never searched for love.
She stumbled into it long before she was old enough to know what to call it.
It lived inside flower crowns that barely survived a minute on his head. Pebbles he slipped into her pockets because every tre...
I'd walk through every painful part of my life again if I knew she was waiting at the end of it."
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
My skin burned.
But my ego burned worse.
A girl.
My girl.
Slapping me in the middle of a packed club.
In front of every single one of my mates?
My fists curled automatically at my sides. Heat surged into my face, into my chest, straight into that part of me that hated being humiliated.
Do not snap. Don't you dare snap. You lose it, you prove every ugly thing about yourself right. Calm the fuck down.
I straightened slowly, tongue pressing into the inside of my cheek where her palm had landed, recalibrating myself.
Renna stood there breathing hard, eyes blazing like she was holding back another hundred strikes and trying to decide if she'd regret them later.
"I was going to tell you," I said, wiping the corner of my mouth with my thumb, as if that would erase the evidence. "I got the email two days ago. I just didn't want to do it over text or a call."
Her face did not soften.
If anything, it went blank in a way that unsettled me more than the anger.
"But I've been swamped this month," I continued, hearing myself ramble but unable to stop. "You know that. Skill assessments, pathology write-ups, that bloody group presentation on cardiovascular pharmacology. We saw each other at the match last week and after that it's been non-stop. I was going to tell you. Just not in a fucking corridor between lectures."
I glanced at the circle of idiots around us, and suddenly every single one of them looked suspicious. "I don't know which one of these fuckers ran their mouth first."
Cameron lifted both hands. "I swear on my life I didn't say a word."
"We didn't even post it anywhere," Aaron threw in defensively.
Casper looked offended. "Mate, I only found out tonight."
A few others echoed similar protests.
No one looked guilty. Which made this worse.
I looked back at Renna.
"I'm sorry," I said, and I meant that part. "I was going to tell you first. I swear. It just kept getting pushed."
Renna stared at me like I'd just spoken fluent Mandarin.
"What are you even talking about?" she asked, and it was the first time I'd heard her voice all evening.
