“If you prefer to sleep alone, I can take the floor.”
“We’ve shared bodies. There’s no problem with us sharing a bed.”
He smiles at that and shuts off the light. Then the mattress dips from his weight. The moon shines through one of the windows, bathing the room in light.
“Sorry. I don’t have curtains yet,” he says.
“It’s okay. I like the moon.” I like everything about this place and that same familiar peace it gave me back in high school washes over me again. I relax, feeling the weight of the world leave me.
We’re side by side, close but not touching.
I search for something to say because though I was tired, now I’m not. “I know your family moved to Dallas after you graduated. Are they all still there?”
“They are.”
“It must have been difficult for you to go through what you did. Finding out after all this time that you were adopted.”
“Yeah. It knocked me for a loop.” He’s quiet for a moment, then says, “After I found out, I started looking at faces everywhere I went wondering who my biological parents might be.” He rolls onto his side and pulls me into his arms. “And it must have been hard for you to go through what you did with your dad and then your ex.”
“It was, and it’s still hard sometimes with my dad. He struts around with that floozy as my momma calls her and then chaos always follows.” I look up at him.
I’ve never told anyone this but for some reason, I want to share it with Kannen. “With my ex, it wasn’t just the betrayal of my trust as far as him cheating, but he also took a picture of me.”
“A picture? What happened?”
“Once when I was asleep, he stuck his phone under my shirt and took a picture of me without a bra on and texted it to all his friends.”
Kannen bolts upright in bed. “He fucking did what?”
I sit up as well. “I didn’t tell my family because I knew my sisters would go after him and with all the shit going on with my family, I didn’t want to add to that mess.”
“Are you okay now?” He smooths my hair.
“I am. I filed a report, but he’d already deleted the image and so did his friends. It was my word against his.”
He runs his hands down my arm.
“Anyway, so there’s that.”
“The friends of his, are they here in town?”
I shake my head. “No. They’re in Clover County.”
“And that asshole struts around town acting like he’s a good guy,” Kannen says. “He needs to be taught a lesson.”
I blink at his tone. “Don’t you dare go hit him.”
“I won’t.”
I put my hands on his face. “Swear it.”
“I swear I won’t punch that asshole.”
He stretches back out in bed and puts his hands behind his head, staring up at the ceiling.
I can tell he’s still thinking about what I told him. To get his mind off that, I say, “You want to hear something I just remembered about you from when we were in school?”
“What?”
