Unloved (The Undone, #2)

by Peyton Corinne

“I think you’d be really easy to love,” she says. It’s a lax, whispered compliment, one she doesn’t know sounds like a gunshot in my head, hitting me straight in the chest.

“And I score on defended nets all the time.” Freddy shrugs, then leans across the now-too-short table to peer up at me with playful eyes and a pretty smile. “The goalie makes scoring more difficult, not impossible.”

“If you were my girlfriend, Rosalie,” he says, his voice deep and rough. My full name is like warm honey dripping from his lips. “You wouldn’t have to do anything to convince me. Just a fucking smile and I’d be a goner, okay?”

I’m a goner

I make a vow then to protect her, the pretty girl with butterflies in her messy curls, even if she’ll never really be mine.

“One cheese and one supreme—I wasn’t sure what you’d want, so I grabbed both.” I blame my multiple breakdowns for how quickly tears start to gather in my eyes at the kindness of it. He didn’t ask if I’d already eaten, didn’t ask if I wanted anything… he just did it. For me.

“I’ll be your friend, Ro,” I say. “I want you to see me as your friend.” “I’d like that, Matt.”

Medication is a step stool, not a cure.”

It was my desperation for wanting to feel something real. Something overwhelming, but worth it.

“To be loved is to be seen—and she’s the first person to really see him. That’s why they fall in love.”

You’re the most amazing, wonderful person I’ve ever met, and sometimes I nearly make myself sick over what I’ll do without you when this is over between us. In my dreams, I take care of you the way you take care of other people, and you’re relaxed and calm. And before bed, you tell me how easy it is to love me. I’m starting to think I’d give up anything, even hockey, for that life with you.

“You sat here for seven hours waiting for me?”

Loving Rosalie Shariff would be the easiest thing I’ve ever done—I know, because I’m already doing it. I think I’ve loved her since the day she stood up for me in that conference room. As a friend first, something I’ve never had, but now it’s more. It’s overwhelming, suddenly hard to swallow or even look at her. So I turn her around and wash her back reverently. I can’t stop myself from pressing a kiss into her back, right at the top of her spine. I think loving you would be the greatest thing in my life.

I love her. I do—and it’s more than that; I admire her, every piece that makes her my Rosalie.

We’re never alone. We always have each other. In our house, there is so much love, it overflows.