Best of Penny Wylder: Virgin Romance by Wylder Penny

Author:Wylder, Penny
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-09-10T16:00:00+00:00

15

My phone is in my hand the minute I leave the gym, calling Kara. It goes to straight to voicemail. I call again, same thing. It doesn’t even sound like she’s screening the calls, the phone is just off. I practically sprint back to our dorm, making it across campus in half the time. I burst into the room, startling another of my suite mates. “Kara?”

“She’s not here,” Ellen says. “Haven’t seen her at all.”

“Shit.” I change out of my uniform as fast as I can, grab my bag and head out again. Where could she possibly be? This is exactly what I was afraid of, that she’d get the wrong idea, that I wouldn’t get to explain, that now she thinks that I’ve betrayed her. Or maybe she thinks something even worse. I don’t know. She’s not in the dining hall, and she’s not in the little lounge in the science building where she likes to study. I haven’t seen her anywhere across campus. I check the gym again, just in case she circled back to avoid me. No luck. Her phone is still going straight to voicemail, though I leave one more message. “Kara. Please call me. I can explain everything. Just give me the chance.”

My anger at Marian and my determination to find Kara suddenly vanish, and I’m left with just overwhelming sadness. No one’s here in the gym, so I just sit down against the wall and let the tears come. Maybe Carter was right. Maybe I should have just told her while we were naked in the shower. It would have been better than finding out from fucking Marian.

The tears flow, and I cry until I can’t even breathe normally. I’m starting to hiccup. Kara and I don’t ever fight. Not really. Small arguments that are resolved after a couple of hours. Nothing like this. This feels bigger, and I don’t know if we’ll come back from it. I don’t know if I’ve wrecked it for good.

I feel someone sit down next to me and I lean over onto Carter’s shoulder. My tears soak through his shirt, but he doesn’t seem to mind. Instead, he takes my hand, thumb rubbing circles on my palm. He doesn’t ask but I tell him what happened anyway. It all comes spilling out quickly. It doesn’t take long—he already knows most of it.

When I’ve finished hiccupping through the last of it, Carter reaches around me, cradling me in his arms. “It’s going to be okay.”

“You don’t know that.”

“No,” he says lightly, “but I’ve been told I’ve got very good intuition.”

I want to believe him, but I can’t. Not yet. Not when Kara is somewhere with a broken heart thinking her best friend is a traitor and a liar.

“Come on,” he says, getting up and pulling me with him. “I know what’s going to make you feel better.”

“If it’s sex, now’s not the time.”

He laughs, and it fills up the gym. “It’s not sex. That comes later.”

“Okay.”

Together we walk out of the gym and Carter holds my hand.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.