Read Online Crash Into You by Kels Barnholdt - Free Book Online Page B

with a plaid button up shirt, and a dressy black button up sweater over it. He looks like he just came home from a fancy night out. Ugh.
    “No offense! It’s just, this is a sensitive situation, and I think Nathan might think there’s something going on…” I wave my hands back and forth between the two of us, “between the two of us.”
    Eric laughs loud, shaking his head back and forth. “That’s ridiculous.”
    In fact, he laughs a little too loud.
    “It’s not that funny,” I say, a little annoyed at him. I mean, there could be something going on between us! There was nothing wrong with me!
    “No, it’s not that, it’s just-“
    “Whatever!” Angelina interrupts, “totally off topic here! What the hell happened?”
    “I don’t know! One minute I’m in the shower getting ready to leave and the next Nathan is over there talking to Stephanie’s mom! Finding out everything!”
    I think I expect some kind of crazy reaction, like maybe Angelina and Eric are going to freak out on the outside just as much as I am on the inside. Instead, I get nothing. No big show, no jaw dropping expressions, or gasps of shock, nothing. Just blank expressions, actually, Eric’s looks kind of blank, Angelina’s looks almost happy. Figures, she’s thought I should tell Nathan the truth since the second I got back.  
    “Hello!” I say, a little louder this time, “did you hear what I said? He knows! About everything!”
    Eric scowls, shaking his head back and forth. “You mean he has no idea you were in that place? You didn’t tell him!”
    “She wasn’t allowed to,” Angelina says slowly, offering up a tiny bit of help, at least.
    “So, you’ve just been lying to him!” Eric’s looking at me like I’m the worst person in the world, like he has no idea how I could be such a liar. Well, clearly he has no idea what I’ve had to go through since I got out.
    “Not lying,” I hiss, looking over my shoulder again, “just leaving certain things out.”
    “Well, that’s horrible, you should have told him first thing. If a girl I was into ever did that to me, I wouldn’t ever forgive her for as long as I live.”
    “Hey!” Angelina says, shoving him a little in the arm, as if she can read my thoughts of horror. “I said you could come if you were supportive! That sounds pretty unsupportive to me.”
    Eric rolls his eyes and takes a step closer to her. “Oh, please, you practically begged me to come along. Not that I blame you, you had no idea what you were walking into.”
    “I did know, she explained it on the phone! And I didn’t beg! You stole my keys at the gas station and refused to let me go anywhere without you!”
    “Well,” Eric says, debating the statement in his mind slowly, “if you want to get technical about it, I guess, that’s true, but-“
    “Again! Not the point!” I practically yell at them. “Help me!”
    “Okay, okay, just relax.” Angelina places her tiny hands on me and pushes me slowly back toward the curb where she sits me down, and places her small body on one side of me, her arm still around me. “It’s going to be okay, you just need to relax. You can do this, it’s Nathan, and the truth was going to come out eventually. He will calm down, he just found out a lot of people he really cares about have been keeping things from him. Let him calm down.”
    “She’s right,” Eric says from the other side of me, he’s rubbing small circles on my back now, trying to get me to calm down. “But you need to calm down too, you need to relax, and just breathe.”
    I take their words in, trying to process them deeply, but it’s really hard. It’s hard to keep my body and mind calm when the biggest secret of your life has just been revealed to the person you’ve cared about the most in your life. I knew they were right though, there was no way I was going to be able to keep the situation under control, or me and Nathan’s emotions under control if I didn’t calm the fuck