“You. Don’t. Get. It.” I wanted to shake her. She wasn’t good enough? Was she insane? I was beginning to think so, because it was the other way around. “You’re better than a one-night stand, Sydney. I can’t do that to you. You’re nothing like those other girls. You deserve more than that.”

Her eyes flared wide again. As close as I was, I saw the tiny tears well up and spill down her cheek. Getting punched in the nuts would’ve felt better than seeing her cry and knowing I was the reason.

And it struck me then that this wasn’t the first time I’d made her cry. There were other times. Little dots on the map of us that didn’t seem like big deals then, but looking back now, they’d meant everything to her. Each memory felt like getting cut with a rusty butter knife.

I was a bigger asshole than I could’ve ever imagined.

In the ninth grade, when I’d ditched movie night with Syd for the junior varsity cheerleader who’d had an extremely talented mouth. Syd’s eyes had been red and swollen the next day in class and she’d told me it was allergies, except…Syd didn’t have allergies. Then during the summer of our sophomore year, I’d constantly broken plans with her to spend time with girls. Our senior year, I promised her a dance at the prom, but I’d left early. Had a hotel room with a girl whose last name I couldn’t even remember. She would always smile and say it was okay, but later…later she’d have something in her eyes—or have just read a sad book, or watched a depressing movie. The same thing in college, even when she was with someone. Even recently—I remembered the look on her face when she’d seen Mindy coming out of the bathroom the morning we’d left for Snowshoe. I’d been wrong and I’d been right. It wasn’t disgust, but it had been crushing disappointment. All those times I’d broken her heart, and she was still here.

She was still here.

A sound came from the back of my throat. “Don’t cry, baby. That’s not what I wanted.” I leaned in, catching the tear with my lips. “You have no idea how much you mean to me.”

Another tear snuck out and I caught that one with my thumb. “I didn’t sleep with her,” I blurted out like a total fucking idiot.

Syd blinked. “What?”

My cheeks heated. “I didn’t sleep with Mindy—the chick who was at my apartment. I didn’t sleep with her, Syd. I know that doesn’t change much of anything, but I didn’t.”