The Dixon Rule: Chapter 45

“YOU’RE NOT DRIVING WITH SHANE?” GIGI SAYS WHEN I PRACTICALLY drag her out of the arena and tell her I’m ready to go.

Mya’s hurrying after us, dressed like she should be at an art gallery instead of a hockey game. She’s sporting leather stiletto boots, tight black pants, and a gray cashmere sweater beneath her peacoat. The scarf is designer, of course. Mya Bell is stunning. She wants to be a surgeon, and I have no doubt her patients are really going to enjoy the view. This gorgeous creature, cutting them open.

“D?” Gigi pushes.

“Shane has somewhere else he needs to be,” I say tersely.

She gives me a blank look. “Okay…?”

It’s a question. I don’t answer it.

We reach Gigi’s SUV, and I slide into the backseat without fighting for shotgun like I normally would with Mya.

Gigi starts the engine and pulls away. I stare at the back of her head and try not to cry. It barely registers that there’s not much chatter between her and Mya, so when Gigi stops at a red light a few minutes later and both women twist around to study me, I blink in confusion.

“What’s wrong?” I ask them.

“Yes, what’s wrong! What is wrong with you?” Gigi demands.

“Seriously,” Mya agrees.

I shrug at them. “Nothing.”

“You haven’t said a single word in five minutes,” Gigi says, incredulous. “You literally just came in fifth place in your favorite dance competition! It’s all you’ve been obsessing about for like a year. I know you and Kenji only started rehearsing this summer, but you’ve been working on this choreography basically since last year’s competition.”

“So?”

“So you should be on cloud nine.”

“You should be babbling about how you’re going to rule the world,” Mya says in that mocking voice of hers. She always likes to bust my ass, but that’s okay because I bust hers right back.

“But instead, you’re sitting there staring at nothing. You’re not even on your phone. What happened?”

Shane doesn’t want me.

The confession is desperate to surface, but I clamp it down, pressing my lips together. No. I will not give Lindley the satisfaction of crying about him to my friends. Then it makes it real.

It is real.

Not to him, it wasn’t.

To my utter horror, tears sting my eyelids. I start blinking rapidly in a desperate attempt to contain them.

“What’s wrong with your face?” Mya demands, and I realize she’s watching me in the side mirror.

Gulping the lump in my throat, I swipe my coat sleeve against my suddenly burning eyes.

“Hey, Diana, seriously. What’s going on?” Gigi looks concerned. “Did you get in a fight with Shane?”

“Not really.” My voice shakes a little. “I mean, he went to meet up with his ex-girlfriend after I asked him not to.”

“Whoa.” Mya whistles softly.

“And she just broke up with her boyfriend and clearly wants him back. But you know…” Sarcasm drips from my voice. “He ‘owes it to their history’ to hear her out.”

Mya’s jaw drops.

Gigi curses. “Are you kidding me? What do you mean, hear her out? She’s obviously trying to win him back.”

“Yeah, that’s what I said.” I clench my teeth to stop my lips from quivering. “But whatever. It doesn’t matter. He can do whatever the hell he wants.”

“He’s your boyfriend.”

“Actually, he’s not.” A tired laugh slips out. “He never was.”

The confession hangs in the car. A loud honk makes us all jump. The man in the car behind us is pissed that Gigi isn’t going through the intersection. She holds her hand up in an apologetic wave and moves forward, heading in the direction of the interstate. It’s about an hour drive back to Hastings, and after this bomb I dropped, I know it’s not going to be a comfortable one.

“It started with him wanting to save face when Lynsey showed up at his apartment with her new boyfriend. So I went over there and, you know, pretended that we were dating. And then he returned the favor after Percy started harassing me.”

“Gigi told me about that,” Mya says, sounding upset. “How on earth did Percival turn into a stalker?”

“I know, right?” I bury my face in my hands and groan into my palms.

When I raise my head, I feel anxious and sad and pissed all in one. I was on such a high earlier. Especially after the tango. Sure, the cha cha was passable, and the Viennese waltz could have been better, but oh my God, that tango.

I’ve never experienced anything like it. The thrill that shot through me when Shane was commanding the floor with his presence, basically fucking me in front of the entire audience without removing a stitch of clothing. After that, everything else seemed anticlimactic. That tango lives in my blood. I’m not surprised we came in fifth.

What I am surprised about is that he chose Lynsey over me. Maybe I’m naive, but I truly believed he was done with her.

I say this out loud now, sighing unhappily.

“I saw the difference in him from the summer until now. We even ran into her once on campus and he didn’t seem like he was pining anymore. He was giving me signals that he was into me.”

Gigi bites her lip. “I think he is into you.”

“Then why the hell did he go off with his ex-girlfriend?” Mya counters.

“You’re not helping,” chides Gigi.

“No, I am helping because we’re not going to delude her into thinking that the guy is into her. This all started because he used her to make his ex jealous.” Mya twists in her seat. “He told you he still had feelings for her, right?”

“In not so many words, yes.”

“So feelings just don’t go away.”

“Yes, they do,” Gigi insists. “Feelings do go away, and then you meet someone new and new feelings develop, and the old ones don’t matter anymore.”

“Clearly these old ones do because he went with his ex.”

The two women continue to argue on my behalf. They’re the devil and angel on each shoulder, except they’re sitting in the passenger side and the driver’s seat. And I don’t know which one of them to believe.

Finally, I interrupt with a loud groan. “I’m with Mya here, G. It was a fake relationship, and it meant nothing to him.”

“He entered a dance competition with you. He wouldn’t have done that if you don’t mean something to him.”

“Yeah, as a friend. But his goal from the beginning was to get his ex back. And I begged him not to go with her tonight and he chose her. So that’s proof of his intentions.”

“I agree,” Mya says.

My heart splinters. I can’t believe he left. I can’t believe he picked her. We’ve been together for months. We see each other every single day. It’s like how the couples in the Fling or Forever hacienda maintain that time moves differently in there. One day in the hacienda is like three months of dating. Having Shane next door, being in contact with him every day, has accelerated this relationship.

It’s not a relationship.

Right. I guess it isn’t.

“Let’s just drop it,” I mutter. “He made his choice. Do you mind dropping me off at home first? I don’t feel like going out.”

“No problem,” Gigi says quietly.

I barely say another word for the rest of the car ride. Eventually Gigi puts on music, and she and Mya talk quietly. They try to include me here and there, but I nod or mumble a yes or a no until they give up.

And right when I think this night can’t get any worse, when Gigi turns onto the street toward my apartment complex, I see something that makes my blood run cold.

I’ve had my gaze glued out the window to avoid making conversation, which means I’m laser-focused on my surroundings and don’t miss the familiar vehicle parked near the driveway of Meadow Hill. A dark-gray hatchback with an NYU sticker on the back bumper. As we drive past it, I catch a blur from the driver’s seat.

“Stop the car,” I blurt out.

“Why?” Gigi asks in concern. “What’s wrong?”

“That was Percy back there. In the gray car.”

When she keeps driving, I smack the back of her seat. “Gigi, stop the car.”

“No. You have a restraining order against him.”

“Exactly, and he’s not allowed to be here.”

The TRO distance requirement is one hundred yards, and he’s parked ten feet from the entrance of my apartment complex. What is he thinking?

“Stop the car, damn it. I want to go over there and find out what he’s up to.”

“No,” Gigi repeats, her tone brooking no argument. “The only thing you’re doing right now is calling the police.”