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through his fingers.
    I glanced back into the bedroom at the nightstand clock. “Before six,” I answered as I sat down on the edge of the couch arm mostly because I had spent the last half hour throwing up and I was scared to death I was— Well, I was fairly sure if I kept standing, my knees were going to give out on me.
    Travis groaned and flopped back into the pillow.
    “Where are Nikki and Shawn?” I asked as I scanned the small front room. It was an older style hotel, probably from pre-1906 Earthquake era, but it had been recently refurbished in red and gold.
    “Next room over,” Travis pointed with the arm that wasn’t flung over his face.
    “Is…uh…” I started, but couldn’t manage to finish. I wasn’t ready for this. Not right now. Not like this.
    Travis removed his arm from his face slowly as he turned to look at me. “No, he’s hopefully still over at my place, where I left him and Connor.”
    “Oh,” I replied, swallowing down the awful taste in my mouth.
    Travis’ eyes slid shut again as he settled back into the pillow. “So what’s up, Nualla?”
    “What do you mean?” I asked as I smoothed the wrinkles in the shirt I was wearing. Which I realized with a start wasn’t even mine, and I had absolutely no frakkin’ idea where it had come from.
    Travis eyed my general state of disheveledness skeptically. “I might be mistaken, but I’m fairly certain I drove halfway across the city at nearly one a.m. to carry you out of a rave.”
    I looked at the floor and lied. “Nothing. I’m fine. Everything’s completely fine.”
    Travis reached out, and gently gripped my wrist. “Hey, don’t shut me out,” he said in a quiet voice. That one that made me want to do anything he asked, because something about it just broke my heart a little.
    I dug my toes into the plush red rose-colored rug under my feet, my big toe poking through a hole in the left foot of my white tights, and bit my lip. I didn’t want to speak my fear, because somehow that would make it more real. And there was something else the two of us really needed to talk about first.
    “I need to ask you something?” I asked, pushing my toe farther out of my tights.
    “Okay,” Travis said encouragingly.
    I stared fixedly at the rug, tracing the golden patterns on it with my eyes. “Did I…did I ever spend the night at your apartment, like back during freshman year?”
    “Why do you ask?” he asked uncertainly.
    “Because I remember that night.”

    TRAVIS

    “ W hat night?” I asked, swallowing hard. I was afraid, so very afraid that I already knew where this was going.
    “That night four years ago.”
    I froze, unable to let the air out of my lungs. Nualla looked up into my eyes, searching for something. And I just looked back at her, terrified of what she would find there.
    “It was real, wasn’t it?” she asked with pleading, frightened eyes.
    I swallowed hard, because I couldn’t bring myself to lie to her. Not her— never her. Not to her face. Not ever. “Yes.”
    “We…we slept together, didn’t we?” she asked in a shaking voice like she wasn’t a hundred percent certain herself.
    Every fiber in my body told me to lie to her. That the truth was so far in the past and that bringing it up now was only going to hurt everyone. But I just couldn’t do it. “Yes.”
    Nualla’s jaw dropped and she stood up quickly, backing a step away from me. “We slept together and you never said anything?!”
    “I…uh. I tried .” Because I had tried. I just hadn’t tried hard enough.
    “ Tried ? You tried ? You can’t try to say something, Travis. You either did or you didn’t !” Nualla spat as she took another step back.
    I reached out for her desperately. “Nualla, let me explain—”
    “You had four fucking years to explain, Travis! I mean, what the frak were you thinking ?! How do you not tell someone something like that?” she shouted at me before turning on her heel.
    I lunged, grabbing her wrist and