Chapter 18. The Weight of Secrets

Ace left about twenty minutes earlier, and I was still lying on my bed and staring at the ceiling as I tried to process what the fuck my life had become. Everything was a mess.

I squeezed my eyes shut as I thought of Ace telling me he wasn’t going to touch me in a sexual way again unless I asked him to.

While that brought me some relief, I knew that wasn’t totally what I wanted.

When I said he couldn’t touch me like that without any explanation, I meant exactly that. Touch me but tell me why.

Tell me why you’re doing it, what’s going through your head—that you think I’m beautiful, that you like the way my skin feels against yours, that you want to be more than just friends.

Tell me you want to be with me.

Somehow, though, I knew he would never say those things to me. Ace saw me as the girl he grew up with. He was attracted to me physically—that much was obvious—but nothing beyond that.

Wouldn’t he have told me by now if there was something m