I heard the same relief in her voice that had surged through me when I found her in my bed. She chewed her lower lip and pulled a blanket around her shoulders. The movement revealed she was wearingmysweatshirt.
“My flight was canceled.”
My eyes flicked to the window, where I could see the earlier snowflakes had turned to freezing rain, sure to ravage our roads with ice. Brenna stared at the storm raging outside, her expression distant. I wanted to keep her with me, to repair the rift between us. Being stuck inside the house with her down the hall was a torment I could no longer endure, not when it might not have to be that way. If only we could remove the armor we’d encased ourselves in eight years ago.
One of us had to begin to remove pieces.
“You have no idea how hard it was to come back and live in the same house as you.” My soft voice sounded loud in the quiet atmosphere of the storm.
“I think I knowexactlywhat it was like, Nathan.”
I leaned forward and rested my elbows on my knees. “With one big difference.”
Brenna’s gaze locked with mine. “What’s that?”
“You were in love with someone else. You were happy with someone else. I wasdyinginside, having to watch it.” I let out a sigh, raking a hand through my hair.
After the custody arrangement was finalized, I returned to Middlebury angry but desperate to see her. The universe delivered when I found her in my bed, just like tonight. I lost it,damning any consequences, because I needed her close. Finding her there had to mean some part of her missed me.
I still remembered the soft moan she let out when I hauled her against me as we kissed. By some miracle, she still wanted me. I rode that high until the next morning when her boyfriend rang the doorbell. Eight months apart, and all I could think about washer. She’d already found another guy.
Brenna broke through my thoughts, her tone filled with as much pain as mine.
“How many girls did I have to see you with?”
“Come on, Quinn.” I shook my head. “You knew they all meant nothing.”
She clutched the blanket tighter around herself, knuckles going white. “No,Sharpe, I didn’t.Ifelt like nothing more than a speck of dirt under your shoe when you pretended the night in your room hadn’t happened. You made me question whether I dreamed it. You made me feeldelusional.”
“What did you want me to do? You had a boyfriend.”
“But you knew—”
“No.” I stood, pointing a finger at her. “Ididn’tknow. And I hated you for making me a party to cheating. An affair tore my family apart, Brenna.”
“I know!” Her face landed in her open palms. “I know,” she repeated, her defeated voice barely audible through her hands.
She took a deep breath, then dropped her mask. “This pull between us”—she motioned in the air—“I’ve never been able to resist it.”
I chanced a step forward, then settled on the edge of the bed and took her hands in my own. With that barest of contact, my heart rate throttled. “Me either. I realized the only way to get through living in the same house with you while not being with you was to make you hate me. I made it easierfor you. You got to hate me—”
Brenna released my hands as if they’d burned her. “Fuck you, Nathan, for thinking you did me a favor by throwing your women in my face.” She ripped off the covers and scrambled out of the bed, away from me. “For all those nasty one-liners. You, more than anyone, knew how well they would land, how deep they would cut. Hating you was misery for me. Don’t you dare rewrite history.”
One moment Brenna and I were staring at each other with eight years of pent-up emotions between us.
The next, the house was plunged into total darkness.
“Fuck,” I muttered, knowing what this meant even before walking to the window to verify every house and the streetlights were dark. “Power’s out.”
“The backup generator is in the basement, but we have no gas to power it,” I said.
Brenna stood in the kitchen beside a collection of flashlights, batteries, candles, and matches. Between my recent grocery run and the gas stove, we’d be able to cook and eat for several days.
We had light and food, but heat was an issue. As if punctuating the point, Brenna shivered, running her hands up and down her arms.
“We need to go up to my room,” I said.
“What? Why?”
