I wish he fucking wouldn’t.
But no matter how many times I tell him to leave, he hasn’t.
Unless I’m quiet enough that he thinks I’m asleep, and sometimes I am, then he finally goes to work. Pretends to be the fucking hero that he is. Leaves me alone in my little corner andreturns with leftovers from the firehouse, smelling like smoke and antiseptic. Leather and sweat and sage.
I squeeze my eyes shut when I hear his footsteps like a crack of thunder coming down the hall. His presence fills the doorway, and it’s too big. Too overwhelming.
Too much.
“Still with me?”
It’s so much quieter than the first time he ever asked me that, but my reaction is still the same as it was then.Pretend I’m dead? I already feel that way.
Funny how none of that has changed one bit. The second I stepped back into this house, it crawled back beneath my skin and made a home there, burrowing so deep that no amount of cutting has bled it back out like I wish it would.
Take it back or fucking kill me.
I sigh.
My ‘yeah’ comes out on a breath, my throat scratchy, my vocal cords cracking from lack of use. “But I wish you weren’t.”
“I know,” he whispers thickly and drops a wad of foil next to my head. “Grilled cheese. Eat up, bubbles. I’ll be right back.”
“Don’t bother,” I rasp out and roll over, yanking the covers up over my head.
“Told you,” he says softly, his weight lifting from the side of the mattress as he stands. “Long as you’re wearing my hoodie, I know you’re full of shit.”
He barely believes the words, even as they leave his lips. I can tell by the shake in them he tries to hide.
As if he doesn’t know it’s the only one that hasn’t been ruined.
I feel him leave, taking the way that he fills out a room with him, and roll over to push the foil off the side of the bed. I want it gone. I wanthimgone.
But the universe has a way of giving me the exact opposite thing I ask for, and Tristen is back within a few minutes. He seeswhere the dinner landed, something in his features falling. He doesn’t even try to hide it as he turns away, lifting a—
“Is that a fucking TV?” I ask and it cracks all to hell. “What are you doing?”
His shoulders lift with his inhale as he places the thing on top of my dresser and starts rooting around for where to plug it in.
“I got tired of watching shit on my phone.”
My brows pinch, my skin too tight to not feel them move. “Bullshit.”
The muscles in his jaw jump like he’s gritting his teeth. “Fine. I thought maybe we could watch a movie. You can ignore it if you want to.”
He steps back, aiming a remote at the screen and flooding the room with light. I wince with a hiss passed my cracked lips, my retinas seared and watering and lift a hand to block it out. The scabbing along my wrist catches on the cuff of my sleeve and pulls uncomfortably. My hand, almost too bony, lets light feed between my skinny fingers. I drop it.
“Why?”
“Why not?” he shoots back and plants his ass right on the edge of the bed.
Why not … why …
“Because I don’t want you here anymore, Tristen.”
The sudden stiffness radiates off him in waves and that piece of me, the tiny inconsequential piece buried beneath the rubble of who I’ve become, quivers.
And yet I resist it anyway.
