“Say Ididlet you in,” I continue, softening. “You wanna tell me what the hell happened earlier this week?”
“Yes.”
She’s never sounded surer. My pulse quickens.
“Okay, then. Right this way, mystery woman.”
In the hall, we bump into Lewis.
“I swear, the Wolinskis are taking over the world,” he says, shaking his head.
I push open the door to my room. “Just ignore him.”
“Trust me—I always do.”
She elbows past me and disappears inside. Lewis is still standing there, gazing after her.
“What’s under her c—”
I slam the door shut and turn the key in the lock for good measure. Then I spin around, keeping my back pressed into the handle.
Carrie shivers and rubs her hands together, trying to warm up. She slips into bed, curling under my comforter, tugging it up to her nose, her brown eyes gleaming. She thought I’d be excited—and right now, seeing her tucked up in my bed like that, I am. But I feel like playing hard to get. I don’t want her to know just being here is enough. She needs to explain herself. And she knows it.
“I’m sorry for what I said to you,” she starts. “I swear I didn’t mean it.”
“What exactly is going on?”
She bites her lip. “I got scared of where this was going. I always swore I’d never have a boyfriend—at least not while I was at school,” she adds.
“Why not?”
“My parents met at college. They got married three years later, and I came along soon after that. My mom was crazy about him. Crazy,” she repeats. “It was this epic love story, until it wasn’t. It turned out he didn’t feel the same. He ditched her for another woman, and that’s when she went off the rails.”
“People get divorced.” I shrug. “It’s no big deal.”
“Except it was.” She swallows. “It started with her yelling. She would yell all the time, and it was tough—but looking back, it was better than what happened next. She started buying dumb stuff for the house. Ordering crap we didn’t need, filling rooms with things.”
Her breath keeps catching in her chest like it’s physically painful to talk about it all. She looks tiny, swaddled in my bed like that. I grip the door handle tighter, willing myself not to move.
“Initially, I thought she was just filling the emptiness, you know? Until it started spiraling out of control—there was stuff everywhere.”
I nod. “Hoarding?”
“Right. It went on for two years. Two years I spent going back and forth to Cincy, tidying away all the junk, throwing stuff away, selling what I could, watching her fall apart. And that made me want to never let a guy in. I never wanted someone to have that hold on me. I was too scared of ending up like her…”
Everything is slotting into place. She overreacted, sure—but now I get where she’s coming from. I feel for her. Living your life in the shadow of your parents is no life at all.
“When Greyson called, they’d just put a fire out. A fire in the living room. It was a candle.” She shakes her head. “One of the stacks of newspapers caught fire.”
“Fuck. Is your mom okay?”
“Physically, she’s fine. But it terrified her.”
“You should’ve let me come with you.”
“I couldn’t do that.”
“I took you back to my dad’s,” I counter.
