Chapter 20

**Winter**

I ran from the cafe as fast as my feet would carry me. I didn’t want to face Nev. I should have punched Hailey in the face for all she said to me. I shouldn’t have let her get to me. I should have had my head strong. Why was I so weak? First I fuck up my plan, and now I couldn’t even stand up to my bully. Maybe I hadn’t changed like I wanted to. I wanted to be strong when I decided I wasn’t going to let their words affect me. I couldn’t let this get to me though. I had to keep going. I had to make sure I wouldn’t lose hope. If I did then they would all win and I couldn’t let that happen.

I did my best not to cry, but it was hard. The tears had a mind of their own. They fell out of my eyes whether I wanted them to or not. I quickly reached to wipe them away. I couldn’t be seen crying.

“Winter,” came a voice that pulled me from my thoughts. I turned around to see who it could have belonged to. Who would have been calling me? I was confused to see Nev. He had my coffee in his hands. I had forgotten it in my rush.

“Winter,” he said out of breath as he reached me. “You walk too fast, girl,” he said trying to make a joke.

“What are you doing Nev?” I asked looking at him confused. “I figured you would never want to speak to me after that. She just told you-” I started but he stopped me.

“She told me what? That she’s a bitch. I already knew that Hailey was one. I just didn’t know how bad of one she was. Who keeps someone else’s nudes? That’s fucking weird.” He shook his head. “They weren’t even given to her which makes it even worse.”

“Yeah, that was extremely creep,” I said. “I couldn’t believe she was going to show you them.”

“I wouldn’t have wanted to see them. It’s wrong to expose someone’s nudes.”

“But, what about what she said? That I was with more than one guy? Doesn’t that bug you?” I asked biting my lip. I was nervous about what he was going to say. Maybe he was just being nice and giving me my coffee back.

He shook his head. “That really isn’t any of my business. What happened is in the past. I can’t change what you did back then.”

I nodded. “Oh, I figured you would never want to speak to me again after that.”

“Why wouldn’t I? That would be a stupid reason not to talk to someone after all that. We are just friends. What happened sounds like it was years ago. It shouldn’t matter now. Besides we are just friends.”

Right. Just friends. I had known that all this was, but it somehow still hurt when he said it. Maybe I was hoping he would like me. It was wrong for me to hope that when I could never return the feelings.

“Sorry, I guess I didn’t think you would want to be friends with me. Not many people wanted to after that happened.” No one really was before that either. This was the first time I really had a chance at friends. I should be happy I had the chance at having friends this time around instead of everyone hating me like before. When I moved to Everlasting with my mother so she could marry Zander’s father, Rich, everyone hated me. Everyone called me the sluts daughter. My mother was younger than Rich and a lot of people blamed her for his marriage failing. I never understood it. As far as I knew, they were already divorced. She couldn’t have broken them up as far as I knew. Another reason was my mom and I came from nothing. We were scraping by when my mom met Rich. We lived paycheck to paycheck in my grandmother's house. Mostly on food stamps and welfare and still only scraping by. My mother was sixteen when she had me. Since my father didn’t want to raise me, she did it all herself forcing her to drop out of high school and take any job that would take her. She felt like she hit the lottery when she met Rich. I wish I had felt the same.

“Is that why you moved?” He asked.

I nodded. “Well, it's a bit more complicated than that, but that was the main reason why. Yes.”

“You don’t have to tell me the full reason. From what I can see, it couldn’t have been easy. Everlasting sounds like a nice place on paper, but it's really just full of assholes who think they are better than everyone else.”

That was true. It was the problem with living in a city mostly full of rich kids. There was only one part of town that was seen as less than others. It was on the east side. It was known as the bad side of town. It was the side of town where Saint was from. Saint was the only one of them who understood what it was like coming from nothing. At least he had a talent. I married into the money or that’s how most people thought.

“It is a nice town on the outside if you never meet anyone, but I guess that’s everywhere. Still, I miss living with my grandmother.”

“What happened to make you move back?”

“She got sick and needed to be moved into full-time care. My parents let me move back into their house to go to school. I couldn’t afford it on my own and my parents always wanted me to come back.”

“Even if this happens?”

“I guess, they don’t see it the way that I do.” I sighed. “It's hard to explain things. I guess it's good they missed me.” There was a pause. “Thank you though. It means a lot to me you didn’t just reject me.”

He nodded. “No problem.” He wrapped his arm around me. “We are friends after all.” Yeah, friends.