Page 131 of Running
I step towards my big brother. “Landon, I’m so sorry that I didn’t tell you about Johnson and me. There were reasons we kept it quiet. We never wanted you to find out this way.”
He looks at me squarely in the eye. “And what is ‘it’? What the hell has been going on?”
How much to tell him? “Well, we realized we liked each other. And we wanted to see what that meant before we told anyone.”
“Except Carter?” Anger radiates through his tone. “Carter called you Johnson’s girlfriend.”
“Carter found out…it was an accident. Not something we deliberately told him.”
“And who else knows?”
My head sinks. “We told his mom and sister because I helped get them to Florida during your bye week. It was hard to hide it then.”
“But not hard to hide it from me?” He gestures to the others. “Us? His family gets to know but not yours?”
“Landon…” Connor says. “Chill.”
“No, I don’t feel like chilling. We have a pact, the four of us. We stand behind each other, we’re a unit, we don’t do anything to jeopardize that. And we don’tlieto each other.”
Now it’s Rawley’s turn to try to step in. “Landon…”
“And don’t get me started on Johnson. My so-called best friend. What the hell is he thinking? He was supposed to be the watchdog.”
“Watchdog—?” Connor asks.
“He isn’t serious about women, Grace.” Landon takes a step towards me. “He’s going to hurt you. And then I’m going to have to kill him.”
“Take it down a notch,” Rawley says.
Landon’s rapid-fire arguments are triggering my people-pleaser side. Butno, I refuse to go there.
“I’m sorry, really, that we didn’t tell you. But this reaction…” I take a deep breath, not used to being inconflict with Landon about my decisions. “It’s kind ofwhy.”
He crosses his arms and starts to respond.
“No, let her speak, Landon,” Rawley says.
“Johnson and I have genuine feelings for each other. We needed space to explore them. Period.”
He huffs out a breath. “I would have given you space.”
“No, you wouldn’t have…” He looks pissed at my retort, which triggers my knee-jerk reaction to stop.
But I resist.No, say what you mean.
“I love you, Landon, but you’re terrible at letting things just be with us. You want to fix them, come save the day, take care of it all. Which shows your big heart, for sure, but it’s also hard when we, whenI, need to figure stuff out myself. It’s why I held what was going on with Johnson close to the vest. Why I never told you about?—”
Oh no, I almost spilled the story of what happened with Larry Smalls.
“Never told me about what, Grace?”
I stay quiet.Shoot.
“About what?”
“Nothing, nothing, it’s just track stuff.”
“What track stuff?”
