18
GABE
I grip the edge of the counter, knuckles tight, because the silence on her end crawls straight under my skin. Every instinct I have wants to drive to her place right now and tear the truth out of whatever's hurting her. My voice stays even only because I force it to.
"Lena," I say, quieter than before, the words running hotter than I mean them to, "can I come over in the morning?"
There's a shift in her breathing. She's thinking hard. "Sure," she says finally. "But don't show up trying to change my mind."
I close my eyes. "I won't."
I will. But I can't tell her that.
We end the call with a drop in the middle of the air, and I stand there for a long time, towel dripping against the floor, wanting to punch a wall and wanting to curl my body around hers at the same time. The idea of her sitting across from another man makes a cold anger move through my chest. I head to bed and stare at the ceiling until dawn crawls in through the blinds.
By the time I reach her house, my head feels like it's been running laps all night. She opens the door before I knock twice. She's in leggings and a soft-looking shirt, hair tied back, no makeup. She looks tired but solid, the way she always looks when she's made a decision she plans to carry like a sack of bricks.
"Come in," she says quietly.
The smell of breakfast hits me immediately. Eggs, toast, and something warm on the stove. She turns her back to me and fusses with a pan like she's trying to keep her hands busy. I shut the door behind me and watch her for a moment. She doesn't turn around. "You cooked?" I ask.
She nods. "Yeah. Sit. The food'll get cold."
Jace is humming to himself at the table, swinging his legs. He smiles when he sees me and waves a piece of toast. It settles something inside me that was shaking all night. "Morning, buddy," I tell him.
He beams with a mouth full of bread and cut-up sausage.
I take the seat across from him. Lena brings the plates over without meeting my eyes. Along with the toast and fluffy eggs are sausages seared to a deep, greedy brown, their skins split just enough for fat to bead and glisten along the edges. A hiss still rises from one of them, the last breath of a perfect pan-fry.
They look incredible, and useless. My stomach is a tight fist. Hunger exists somewhere far away, behind whatever churned through me last night and whatever is still happening right now. I pick up the fork only to set it down again, the shine of those sausages mocking the fact that I can't force a single bite past my throat.
We wait until Jace finishes his last bite. School's closed today, and he wants to go out to the yard and paint. Lena set up canvases for him, and he runs to them like he's been waiting all morning. We sit together for a moment, watching him make bold red circles on the canvas and proudly call it a tomato sitting on a treetop. He looks back at us and grins, showing a small gap between his two front teeth that has no business making my heart ache the way it does. I clear my throat and watch him get busy with pebbles and dirt, the way kids do.
"So," she starts. "I'm doing the date because it'll let the gossip die down. That's all."
The words are clipped. Straight to business. No room for argument.
I study her face. She's holding herself too tightly, like someone pushing a door closed with their whole body. "Why do you care so much about the gossip?" I ask.
She stiffens. "I don't. I just need it to go away."
"You act like this date is the only fix," I say. "It's not."
She cuts her eggs into smaller pieces. "Gabe, I'm not discussing the entire town with you over breakfast."
"That's not what I asked."
Her answers just sound off, because she's not looking at me. She's speaking too quickly and her tone is too flat. It's as if she's building a wall while I'm sitting in front of her. This spikes a hot anger in my chest, though it's not her that I'm angry with, but at whatever has her this twisted up and whoever made her believe she has to deal with this alone. I'm in half a mind to push the plate aside and force her to look at me so I can tell her shedoesn't have to carry any of this. But if I push too hard, she'll shut down even more.
The anger sits hot under my ribs anyway. Someone has her scared, or cornered, or ashamed, and she won't say who. And the thought of that—of her turning to a date because she feels outnumbered, not because she wants it—makes something inside me snap tight.
I keep my face still and don't let any of it show. But my pulse is thudding like I'm back in a bad room overseas and waiting for the next hit. I don't want her on this date and I don't want some other man touching what's mine. And it bothers me that she thinks this is her only way out.
She finally looks up and into my eyes and sighs. "I'm doing this because it's simple," she says. "It shuts people up. It resets things."
"Resets what?"
She hesitates for one long second, then gives a shrug that doesn't fit her body at all. "My life. Maybe it's time I… put myself out there."
