Merde, I want that. Icraveit.
Tell him.
I take a breath?—
Galen solidifies, stilling in my arms like a witch has cast a spell on him. “Fuck,” he chokes out. “Fuck.” He braces a hand on my chest and pushes back, up and away from me, putting air between us.Space.“I can’t do this.”
I go from fire to ash, struck dumb as mortification seizes me, my heart plummeting as Galen scrubs a rough hand over his face, like he can claw whatever he’s feeling right out of himself.
He’s still on top of me.
Then he’s not. He’s scrambling from the couch until he staggers to his feet and yanks his jeans back into place. “I need to go.”
Right.
Because he can’t do this.
With me.
That’s how it lands, cold and merciless, and my throat sears with words I can’t formulate, questions I can’t shape as shame and self-loathing crashes into me.
I screwed it up.
I don’t know how, but I did, and it fucking hurts.
My clothes are a disaster. I straighten them, dragging shaky hands over my rumpled t-shirt, and rise from the couch, trailing after Galen as he blows through the house and stamps into his shoes. “Are you okay?”
He doesn’t answer me.
Just opens the door, cold air flooding in, and turns to give me one last pained look.
Then he’s just…gone, leaving nothing but a cold breeze and a breath of apple pie in the air, and I’m a fucking statue in his wake, hollowed-out and frozen. It takes me a second to reanimate and shut the door, pressing my forehead to the wood as if it can ground me enough to have a clue what just happened.
It doesn’t, obviously. And behind me, the radio gets in on the fun, shifting from Roxy Music to a track so ironic I want to scream.
Lonely This Christmas.
Fucking hell.
At this point the song was written for me.
Galen
I’m the biggest fecking eejit that’s ever fecking lived. I know this before Logan tells me.Heknows it withoutmetelling him what’s got me tripping over my bottom lip. But that certainty, it doesn’t mean anything. I could have all the doubt in the world and it would still be fecking true.
“You need to get out more,” Logan informs me from sunny Devon. It’s not sunny, but imagining it is lets me resent him even more for his sage instincts. “I swear, you only leave the house to get laid these days.”
“Aye, well. Maybe I’ve got nowhere to go now my buddy’s fecked off down south, eh? No one to cook me eleven sausages and take me down the pub. Ever think about that?”
“All the time,” Logan says, and he means it. My pal, he’s a serious fella. Severe, if you don’t know him. “I miss you too, we all do.”
“Never said I missed you.”
“Heard you all the same, though.”
Course he did. That’s why he’s my friend. And he’s right—about all of it. I do miss him, and I do need to get out more. Meet new people. Find a new hobby that isn’t fucking strangers and convincing myself I love my stupid life. But the thought of doinganything beyond sulking into my tea mug makes my chest ache with longing, and I feel like I deserve the pain.
You left him.
