Dirty Dreams novel · Chapter 13 of 24

Chapter 13: What Tate Heard

Tate's POV

I stood in the hall outside her door for a long minute after I unlocked it.

I could hear her through the wood.

She was breathing slowly, the way a person does when she has decided to sleep and isn't ready to.

I wanted to go back in.

I went down the hall instead, because there was a conversation I owed, and it wasn't hers.

In May, the night after graduation, Dylan had lain on his back in the dark and told us about March.

Brody said "Dude" four times.

Wyatt said nothing and stared at the ceiling.

I lay on the floor and listened to Dylan describe his stepsister saying his name through a wall.

He told it with his forearm over his eyes, in the voice of a man confessing.

What I thought, on the floor, was small and plain.

She said his name, and he never wrote back.

That was all I took from it then.

I didn't think about her face, or her legs, or what I would do.

That came on Friday night, when Dylan started talking again and I said the word popsicle before I could stop myself.

Tonight I had said out loud what I'd known for four days, and I had her ankle in my hand when I said it.

Dylan's room smelled like feet and beer.

Wyatt lay on the air mattress with his back to the room, breathing in the long even way of a man who is faking it.

Keep reading free with an account. Start Dirty Dreams from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.