“He kept talking.”
“He asked one question.”
“In a very loud way.”
“Everything Milo does is loud. You know this. You usually threaten to buy him a shock collar and move on.”
I huffed once, weakly.
“You’ve been exhausted,” Roman said. “Not road-trip tired. Not game tired. Bone tired. You look like you’re sleeping with one eye open.”
I pressed my thumb into the seam of my steering wheel. “I’m sleeping.”
“Are you?”
“Sometimes.”
“Jace.”
“Don’t.”
He was quiet for a beat. “Okay.”
That made me feel worse.
I tipped my head back and stared at the roof of my car. My thoughts kept bunching, tripping over each other. Declan in the park. Declan’s knuckles against mine. Vanessa asking if she did something. Roman, on the phone, offering me a place to put a truth I couldn’t hand him.
“I’m trying,” I said, and hated how small it sounded.
“I know.”
“No, I mean it. I know I’m being weird. I know I’m late or I’m early by accident because I overcorrect, and I forget shit, and I’m... I’m sharp with people when I don’t mean to be. I know. I’m not sitting around thinking everyone else is the problem.”
“I know that too.”
I blinked hard.
Roman’s voice softened in a way I didn’t know what to do with. “That’s why I’m worried.”
The truth rose so fast I almost choked on it.
I almost said, I’m seeing someone.
I almost said, it’s not a woman.
I almost said, it’s Declan, and I know, I know, don’t look at me like that, I know exactly how bad it is.
Instead I gripped the phone until my fingers hurt.
“I’m not ready to talk about everything,” I said.
Roman didn’t answer right away.
When he did, there was no anger in it. “I figured.”
“You figured?”
“You think I’ve known you this long and don’t know what it looks like when you’re carrying something? You get twitchy. You make too many jokes. Then you stop making jokes at all. Then you start lying badly because your brain moves faster than your morals can file the paperwork.”
