He didn’t respond, just kept looking at her with those wounded golden retriever eyes.
Lilah sometimes felt like she was walking around with a snake coiled in her belly just waiting for her to open her mouth, ready to strike at the slightest provocation. She knew she was out of control—skin flushed, heart beating wildly, regret already brewing in the distant part of her mind that held her better judgment.
She was practically daring him to take the bait. To dump her, to call her a bitch, to give back whatever she deserved and then some. Plenty of men would—and had—with less.
But he didn’t. He just shook his head, casting his gaze to the ground. When he spoke, his voice was weary. “Maybe I should get out of here. We probably both need to cool off a little.”
“Or you could go, and we could just call it.” It was out of her mouth almost before she realized what she was saying. She still didn’t feel like she was fully inside her body as she continued. “I think this…whatever this is…has run its course.”
He raised his eyes back to hers. His brows were knit together, lips pursed, face hard and closed off. He’d never looked at her that way before. It felt wrong on him, somehow.
“So I guess that’s that, then.”
“That’s that.” She looked down at her feet as she said it.
There was no movement in her peripheral vision for several long seconds.
“Right,” he said at last. The mattress creaked as he eased himself off the bed and began hunting around for his clothes.
She didn’t know why she’d expected him to argue more. To try to fight for her, for them. That wasn’t really Shane’s style. He was easy, after all.
Still, his quiet acceptance was a punch in the gut.
She sat on the edge of the bed, watching him pull on his jeans, self-loathing curdling in the pit of her stomach.
Once he buckled his belt, he made his way back over to her. She just stared up at him.
“That’s my shirt,” he said.
Lilah looked down at the faded, unfamiliar logo across her chest.
“Oh. Right.”
She stood, pulling the shirt over her head and handing it over. She wasn’t wearing anything underneath it besides a thong, and she crossed her arms over her breasts self-consciously as he took it from her, leaving her exposed. She noticed his eyes flick down, his nostrils flaring slightly. For a brief, desperate moment, she considered trying to seduce him into goodbye sex. But she’d never felt less sexy in her life, and besides, if he rejected her, she’d probably shrivel up and die of humiliation on the spot.
She threw on a shirt of her own and a pair of leggings as Shane finished gathering his things; they both averted their eyes, giving each other a wide berth as they moved around the room. When he reached her bedroom door, he hesitated, looking back at her.
She met his gaze, her skin prickling with unease. The aggression had drained out of her almost as quickly as it arrived. All she wanted to do now was climb back under the covers and stay there, trying in vain to hide from the remorse that already threatened to overwhelm her.
She heard herself say, quietly: “I don’t want to lose you as a friend.”
He let out a short exhale through his nose, the ghost of a laugh, then shook his head resignedly before meeting her eyes again.
“We’ve never been friends, Lilah.”
She’d been wrong earlier.Thiswas the punch in the gut.
Then he was gone.
After he left, she did her best to distract herself by pulling out her laptop and frantically searching their names over and over, trawling every social media platform and gossip site she could think of, her heart in her throat. Fortunately, to her shock and relief, it seemed like they’d managed to stay under the radar as far as the general public was concerned.Unfortunately, from what she could gather from her texts with Polly—her favorite writer on the show—and Max, it seemed like no one else had joined them on their little tattoo adventure. They had, in fact, gotten couples tattoos. She shut her laptop and curled up on her couch under a blanket, letting herself drift off into a sullen nap.
Later, after she was rested and showered and caffeinated and rehydrated enough to think straight, she allowed herself to replay the events of that morning, marinating in her guilt and embarrassment. But there was something else there that unsettled her most of all: the sharp sting of loss.
She’d tried to ignore the tiny intimacies that had piled up over time. The inside jokes. His toothbrush in her bathroom cabinet. The way he had her coffee waiting for her in the morning. The unfortunate fact that the best sleep she’d ever gotten was with him curled around her, his lips pressed to the nape of her neck.
He’d told her he loved her only once, four or five months ago. Almost inaudibly, into her shoulder, in the middle of the night, after they’d both inexplicably woken up at the same time and reached for each other, during sex that was half-dreamy and unusually tender. She was so overwhelmed she’d pretended she hadn’t heard him. If he’d said it again in daylight, looking directly at her like he actually meant it, that would’ve been one thing. But he hadn’t.
Mostly, though, she’d ignored it because she hadn’t believedhim. Not that she thought he was lying or anything. They spent a lot of time together, obviously, but they were usually working or fucking, their conversations rarely delving deeper than banter or small talk. She believed that he loved the idea of her, he loved sleeping with her, he loved that she fit into his life in a way that was both seamless and undemanding. But he didn’t loveher. He couldn’t. She hadn’t shown him enough of herself for that to be possible.
