The cushions sagged under me, and I tucked my feet up. My arms wrapped around a throw pillow because I needed something to hold on to that wasn’t my own rib cage.
Kit folded herself into the opposite corner, facing me, one knee bumping my thigh. “Okay,” she said. “Start with why you’re crying and work your way toward why you have luggage.”
The laugh that burst out of me tilted straight into a sob. I pressed the heel of my hand to my sternum, like I could hold everything in place.
“We fought,” I said. “Wes and I.”
Kit’s mouth flattened. “Okay, but last time we talked he was just your grumpy rehabilitation raccoon, and now you’re on my couch with sad-girl energy and a go bag. Please fill in the middle.”
Heat crawled up my neck. I stared down at the pillow seam between my fingers. “It wasn’t just a fight,” I admitted. “We’ve been more than roommates.”
Her eyes went wide. “Definemore.”
My laugh came out thin. “We’ve been sleeping together.”
There was a beat of stunned silence.
“Wes? Hayes’s best friend Wes. Wes who we’ve known since we were kids.WesWes?” She blew out a breath. “I mean I get it. He’s hot in that rugged, ‘maybe my magical pussy can cure your depression’ kind of way but ...holy shit.”
I exhaled, trying to find a good place to begin. “It started as—” I broke off, wincing. “Okay, you have to promise not to make it weird.”
Kit leaned in, eyes glittering. “Those are the exact words someone says right before it gets so weird. Give me the PG-13 version, because I am not emotionally prepared for full-penetration details before lunch.”
“It started as sex lessons,” I blurted. “For him. So he could figure out how the physical mechanics worked now. After the accident.”
She just stared at me. “I’m sorry,” she said slowly. “Sex. Lessons.”
I groaned, dropping my head back against the cushion. “It wasn’t like that. I wasn’t grading him. He was scared. I offered. We made rules. It was supposed to be controlled and helpful and very ... mature.”
A slow, delighted smile curved her mouth. “You absolutely made a syllabus.”
“I did not make a syllabus,” I said, annoyed. “I maybe—it was an organized approach.”
Kit pressed a hand to her heart, desperately trying not to grin. “I’m so proud.”
Ignoring her teasing, I told her about watching his confidence come back in stuttering pieces. How it had felt to be the safe place he could practice wanting again. How somewhere along the way, practice had stopped being the right word and I had fallen stupidly, quietly, all the way in love with my grumpy, injured, ridiculous roommate.
Then I told her about the jobsite. About the stairs and the slick wood and the way his leg had gone out from under him. The crew, the humiliation, Austin calling Hayes. The way Wes had come home vibrating with shame and turned it on me because it was an emotional overload from already turning it on himself. The words he’d thrown between us like a barricade: lessons, practice, faking being normal.
Saying it out loud made my chest ache all over again.
“I told him I loved him,” I finished, voice fraying. “And then I told him I loved myself too. Then I picked up a bag and walked out.”
Silence settled between us, thick and stunned.
Kit stared at me for a long beat, her jaw tight. She did not, miraculously, sayI told you soormen are trashor a single thing about how I should have kept my distance from a situation that complicated.
She simply exhaled. Hard.
“I swear to god,” she muttered, “emotionally unavailable men should come with warning labels.”
A wet laugh hiccuped out of me. “He did have one,” I said. “It was just written in sarcasm and trauma and posted on the refrigerator.”
“Yeah, well, I want it printed on a forehead next time so we can all see it from space.” She bumped her shoulder into mine. “For what it’s worth, I think you did the right thing.”
“It feels like shit,” I said.
“Right things sometimes do,” she answered, because she was annoying and usually correct.
