“I couldn’t have named the three branches last night. Like, who is the president again?”
“In all fairness,” Charm said, “could you before you were dickmatized?”
“Not the point.”
Charm leaned forward, practically sparkling with gossip-fueled joy. “Does he talk?”
I stared at her.
She gasped. “He talks.”
“Charm.”
“He looks like he talks.”
Aura sighed into her coffee. “Can we please not make that sentence worse?”
“No, because I need to know if Cade Mercer is silently intense or verbally devastating.”
My entire body went hot, and Charm nearly fell off the couch.
“Oh my gosh,” she whispered. “Verbally devastating.”
I shoved the pillow over my face. “I’m moving out.”
Aura pulled the pillow down just enough to see my eyes. “No, you’re not. You’re going to stop hiding behind throw pillows and tell us why you look happy and terrified at the same time.”
That stole the giddy laughter right out of me because there it was.
The terrifying part.
I lowered the pillow into my lap and looked at the coffee sweating between my hands. The apartment was warm and bright around us, the neon lips on the wall glowing pink against the afternoon gray outside, Charm’s perfume mixing with vanilla candles and the faint scent of popcorn someone had made and abandoned.
This was the safest place in my life outside my dad’s house. The place where I had cried over bad grades, laughed until I snorted during reality shows, curled into Aura’s side when nightmares got too loud, and let Charm paint glitter on my eyelids before forcing me out into the world because sparkle was armor.
If I could say it anywhere, I could say it here.
“He knows me,” I whispered.
Neither of them moved.
I swallowed, staring down at my cup. “Not the version people get because it’s easier. Not just the jokes or the loud or the whatever manic pixie ESPN disaster people think is happening here. He knows when I’m hiding. He knows when I’m deflecting. He knows which jokes are real and which ones I use so people stop looking too close.”
Aura’s face softened and Charm’s teasing disappeared completely.
“And he doesn’t make me feel stupid for it,” I said. “He doesn’t do that soft thing where people look at you like you’re a cracked antique they’re scared to touch. He just… meets me there. Like if I’m weird, he gets weird. If I’m scared, he gets steady. If I’m trying to run, he blocks the exit and says something annoyingly accurate.”
Charm smiled faintly. “That sounds intoxicating.”
“It is.” My throat tightened around something too big for one breath. “And the sex is so good it should be studied byscientists with clipboards and protective eyewear, but that’s not even the part making me spiral.”
Aura tilted her head. “Then what is?”
“He stayed.”
The words came out smaller than I wanted.
“He saw the worst parts last night,” I said. “Not all of them, but enough. He saw the Nevers. He saw the moth. He saw me ugly cry in a way no woman with good mascara should ever be witnessed, and he didn’t act like I was too much.”
