Page 60 of The Right Kind of Wrong

She wasn’t sure when, but at some point, Denny had come to stand next to her. He lobbed his considerably longer arm over her shoulder and pulled her close. “Whatever’s going on in that head of yours, you don’t need to carry it all alone.”

Monroe wiped at her wet eyes, not sure when she’d started spilling silent tears. She tried to squirm away from him, but he held her tight. “You smell like man,” she deflected, trying to clear the catch from her throat.

Denny looked down at her and smirked. “Not like Blake, I’m sure. Is she what’s got you all out of sorts?”

Usually, Monroe would have redirected him or been evasive. Even with Denny, even at their closest, she’d still sometimes hold her emotions close to her chest.

It was a habit borne of need and survival instinct.

That night with Blake, in the fort, had been wildly anomalous for her, but she was feeling inconveniently vulnerable again. The vulnerability had multiple sources. How off Blake was acting. How raw Monroe felt after thinking about her mom. And how being back in Cypress Falls, with Denny and Maisie, was already starting to feel a scary amount like home.

She didn’t know how to reconcile that idea when her mom wasn’t here, too.

And she’d cried more goddamn times in the past month than she could remember doing in her entire life before coming back.

She leaned into his solid frame. “I was actually thinking about my mom, but Blake isn’t helping things either,” she admitted.

Denny squeezed her shoulder before stepping back and clenching his hands into fists. He kept his feet planted but swayed back and forth, like a video game character waiting to be activated. “We’ve got a whole lifetime to unpack your mama drama, rest in peace, and I can’t solve that for you right now. What’s going on with Blake? Do I need to have words with her?”

Monroe laughed and wiped at her eyes again because that was just so . . . Denny.

Before dinner burned, which she’d almost forgotten she was in the middle of making, she turned back toward the stove and grabbed the jar of sauce on the counter. It was easier for her to talk when she was doing something, and she took advantage of that fact now.

“I’m not sure what’s going on with Blake. It’s clear that her divorce did a number on her, but she seems to be handling things about as well as can be expected.” Even with the little that Monroe was divulging, she felt protective over Blake’s trust, and she didn’t want to betray it.

Denny pulled out a chair from the kitchen table and sat down, extending his long legs and crossing them at the ankles. “You have no idea. I mean, I’m not one for gossip . . .”

Monroe looked over her shoulder and lifted a dubious brow.

Denny held his hands up. “I’m not. Not when it actually matters. I can’t help that people treat me like furniture at the shop and that I am, as a result, privy to a lot of information that I may not otherwise receive.”

Monroe knew that it was wrong to play into his hand like this, but she couldn’t help it. Or, at the very least, she didn’t want to fight it. Especially not where information about Blake was concerned.

She nodded at Denny to keep talking.

Which he did, like she had known he would. “That woman’s been through a lot, Roe. Noah Duvall just threw her away like she was trash and then started parading his new, younger, already very pregnant girlfriend—now wife—around.”

Monroe seethed. It lit her up from the inside out, the anger burning through her. Noah Duvall was a fucking idiot. And an actual, bonafide, certified asshole.

“The definition of failing upward,” Monroe finally bit out as she poured the uncooked noodles into the boiling water.

She’d heard most of this from Blake already, though. At least, the surface-level parts. She knew, as a fellow human, that it had probably made Blake feel awful, but they hadn’t gotten into the deep, messy bits.

The ones that festered. Lingered. The ones that made it hard to sleep as the thoughts rolled around in your head.

Yeah, Monroe knew all about those.

She stirred the softening spaghetti, trying to will her own thoughts away.

The fact that she couldn’t even deal with her own shit meant she probably shouldn’t go there with Blake either. Because the closeness that she felt with her, the desire to go deeper, like an invisible string was pulling her, was exactly why she shouldn’t.

Good, healthy things didn’t come into Monroe’s life. And if they did, they definitely didn’t stay.

Blake deserved better than being collateral damage in whatever fucked-up life Monroe was on track to lead.

Denny was being uncharacteristically quiet, and she gave the boiling water one last look before she turned to face him, leaning her back against the counter.

He studied her in this sort of lazy but focused look that he had, like he saw a lot more than people gave him credit for. Finally, he asked, “Are you sweet on her?”