Diving Deep (UK Crush #2)

Chapter 56

"Okay, we've avoided it long enough, I think," I said, touching his knee with the bottom of my wine glass.

"Me first?" I looked at him. "Is that okay?"

He nodded.

I took a deep breath. "I know what Richard's been filling your head with, these last months. Geth told me, and I saw the texts."

Teddy sat up.

"How?" He asked, brows drawing together.

"How do you think? Last night, after you passed out, he called me, then he sent himself the texts so he could show them to me! And before you get pissed off at him, the truth is that you should have shown them to me yourself, a long time ago, you know that." I tried to keep my voice calm.

"Do you believe the things he said to you? That I somehow belong with them, and not with you? That there are different worlds, like a caste system or something, and they can't mix, and that that one is mine, and this one's yours?" I looked at him.

He looked at me, his face flickering in the firelight.

"I don't know what I believe anymore. For a while, yeah, I did. You just seemed so comfortable with him, with all of them, at that place. And you can talk to them, really talk, about all that stuff, you don't have to explain what you're saying like you do when you're talking to me or the other boys, except maybe Matthew." He shrugged.

"What do you mean?" I asked. "When were we even together with people from that place?"

Now he looked embarrassed.

"After I stopped taking you, sometimes I'd follow the car." He rolled his eyes. "Fuck, I can't believe I'm telling you this. I missed you so much, you can't imagine."

I moved my foot forward, putting my toes on top of his foot and rubbing.

"Yes I can," I responded softly.

"Anyway, sometimes I'd see you standing around after, talking to some of the other students. A boy with blond hair, and a girl with red hair."

"Phillip. And Mia." I nodded.

"And I'd see you, using your hands like you do when you're really into what you're talking about, and they'd be nodding, really getting what you were saying, and you'd have your book open, showing them some music, and you'd all be talking about it, you'd all be laughing and moving your fingers around. You looked gorgeous, one hundred percent alive, just humming with life.

"You deserve to look like that all the time." He leaned forward. "You should.

"And if that bloke, that Dr. Allen, if he can give you that life, well, then, you should be with him.

"With me, you get sex in cars, crazy girls threatening your life, paps chasing you all the time, strangers judging you constantly, on what you wear, what you look like, an endless stream of hotel rooms, of being left on your own for months on end if I'm on the road. You get crazy people trying to get you to sign things and tell you what to do and what to say, you get people calling you a slut and a gold digger to your face. And you get me, hitting you in the face, leaving you bleeding in a bathroom for hours, then you get me telling you while you're sitting naked in a bathtub at your most vulnerable that I think us being together is a mistake, sending you running in a towel to another man's bedroom." A tear fell from his eye, turning into a shimmering jewel as it ran down his face.

"I can never be a Dr. Allen, Birdie. I can never be a well bred, educated, classy man who can pick out the right bottle of wine or help you with your Rachmaninoff. And I'm so afraid that, like he said, one of these days you're going to wake up to that fact and really, really regret your choice. And by then it will be too late for you.