Bridger watches me like I’m not entirely human right now.
“She left,” I say. “She just needed air.”
Neve bursts back in, out of breath, eyes still wide. “She’s gone. She’s not here. Damian, what the fuck?—”
“I saidshe left!” My voice cracks out like a whip, harsher than I mean, but it shuts them both up.
For a second.
Then Bridger steps back, eyes scanning the wreckage again—my blood, the shattered kitchen, the look on my face. He throws his arms out. “And you think afterthisshe just needed air?”
I stand, dizzy, adrenaline still clawing at my throat. “This happenedaftershe left.”
He doesn’t believe me. Or maybe he does—but it doesn’t matter. Because the scene tells a different story. A fucking horrormovie version of what they walked into. And I can’t blame them. Not when I look like this. Not when I feel like this.
“I lost it,” I say, quieter now. “She walked out, and I—I didn’t know what to do with it.” The silence. The guilt. “I didn’t know what to do with my hands.” I hold up the bloody mess that used to be my hand. “I didn’t know what to do withanything.”
The rage has burned out, and what’s left is this gutted, hollow thing in my chest I can’t scrape out. Neve and Bridger hover like they’re waiting for me to detonate again, but I don’t have it in me. Not right now.
Neve paces toward the couch, scans the room, then picks something up off the cushion. “She left her phone,” she says, holding it like evidence. “She leftwithouther phone.”
My vision blurs, but I don’t let it stop me. I walk to the trash, grab a handful of destroyed cartons and paper napkins, and start tossing them into the bag like I can clean this up fast enough to erase what they walked in on.
“She needed air,” I mutter. “So she left quick. That’s all.”
Bridger exchanges a look with Neve, but they don’t argue with me. Not yet. They start helping without a word. Neve’s pulling glass out of the corners. Bridger’s on his hands and knees wiping up sauce. The three of us working in this wrecked kitchen. I’m so fucking ashamed the bridge of my nose stings.
“She stormed out for no reason?” Bridger asks as he stacks broken mugs in a bin.
“Yeah,” I say.
“For no reason?” Neve repeats the question, wiping soy sauce from the cabinet.
I grunt, grabbing the broken remains of a pan and dropping it in the trash. The vase lies in pieces near the counter, water pooling underneath, flowers splayed like casualties. I crouch down, gathering the torn petals and jagged stems, trying, futilely, to piece something beautiful back together. My fingerstremble as I press wilted color into broken glass, like that’ll fix any of it.
There’s a weird rhythm to Bridger and Neve helping me. The three of us moving through the chaos, piecing it back together like if we can get it clean fast enough, we won’t have to talk about what really happened here.
But Neve’s too much of a pain in my ass for that. She stops, turns, and looks between us—eyes narrowed, voice suddenly razor-sharp in its calm. “What’s really going on?”
I pause, a busted bowl in my hand.
“You two are lying to me,” she says, matter-of-fact. “Or not lying. Just… dancing around something.”
Bridger looks at me, then her, then sighs.
Neve crosses her arms. “Why did you buy me a ticket to come here, Damian?”
I look away. Because that question has weight. Because that question leads to answers that don’t fit neatly into trash cans or garbage bags like the broken glass does.
Bridger slams the busted dustpan on the counter harder than necessary and rounds on me, jaw clenched tight. “You keeping shit from everyone is making it all worse.”
“It’ll be fine.”
Neve tosses a handful of dirty paper towels into the trash. “You know she thinks all there is between you is sex, right? She thinks you’re just going to leave.”
“No, she doesn’t,” I say.
“Uh, yeah, she does, asshole. She doesn’t think she means anything to you. And you need to fix that if she does mean something.”
