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“Grayson—”

“The same way you didn’t want me with you two years ago,” his voice is stern and cold, but I find myself standing taller in the chill of it. “Only difference is I’m not a coward who can’t say it to your face.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” I whisper.

“Don’t.” His voice drops, scraped raw, and he steps closer. “Do not stand in my kitchen and play dumb with me, Sienna.”

“I’m not playing anything,” I snap, heat rising up my neck. “I genuinely don’t know what you’re⁠—”

“I waited for you,” he whisper-yells it, the volume crushed down so it doesn’t carry up the stairs to Iris, and somehow that makes each syllable scrape against my skin. “Hours. I sat there for hours like an idiot waiting for you, and you never came.”

“No, you’re wrong. I waited for you.” I shake my head, the words coming out small. They are the only ones I’ve been holding onto this whole time. “You stopped answering my messages. You’re the one who⁠—”

“Bullshit.” He sucks his teeth.

He is close enough that I have to tip my head back to hold his gaze, close enough that the heat is back, except there is nothing soft in it this time. My back hits the counter. I didn’t feel myself move.

Every part of me is at war. Half of me wants to shove him out of my space and the other half wants to fist my hands and demand he explain the version of events where he is the wounded one, because if he is telling the truth then I’ve spent two years grieving the wrong story.

“I don’t know what you tell yourself at night,” he murmurs, quiet and even and deadly. “But I know exactly how it went. So do me a favor while you’re living in my house, Songbird.” His eyes drop to my mouth for half a second, then snap back up like it cost him something. “Stay out of my way.”

“What’s going on?” Iris yawns in the doorway, robe cinched tight, hair in a sleep-bun, eyes ticking between us with a crease forming between her brows.

I step away from him so fast my hip catches the counter. My face is on fire. How long has she been standing there? What did she hear? The panic comes up hot and immediate.

“Nothing,” Grayson grunts. The fury folds up and vanishes behind his face like it was never there at all. He reaches past me into the fruit bowl behind my hip, his forearm grazing my waist, grabs an apple, and is already heading back to the coffee pot on the other side of the kitchen. “Morning, Iris.”

“Morning.” Iris shuffles toward the island and drops onto a stool with the weight of a woman who didn’t sleep well, though for normal reasons.

“Coffee?” I ask, reaching for a second green mug to hide my flushed face. “I’ll make it.”

“No!” She shrieks so loud and fast that I freeze with the mug halfway off the shelf, and Grayson glances over from the coffee pot with one eyebrow raised.

I turn and look at her.

Iris smiles at me, sweet and a little sheepish, tucking a loose strand back into her bun. “I changed how I like it. Gray knows the new way.”

I roll my eyes. This is Iris’s polite way of telling me she hates the way I make my coffee just as much as Gray does.

“Right.” I chuckle to myself.

“Anyway.” Iris yawns into the back of her hand. “I have to be at the bakery by nine, there’s a wedding order and Harley called out, so you’re on your own for most of the day, Birdie. Will you survive?”

“I’ll be fine.” I shrug. “I’m basically nocturnal now. I’ll probably crash within the hour.”

“You just had coffee.” She stares pointedly at my empty cup, and my face floods with more heat.

“Coffee doesn’t work on me anymore.”

Grayson crosses the kitchen and sets a fresh mug down in front of Iris. “You still good for Dom’s cake next weekend, Bubbles?”

“Yes.” Iris rolls her childhood nickname, blowing on her cup. “Triple chocolate. Dark ganache between the layers, espresso in the sponge, salted caramel on top, because he almost cried from how good it was last time I made it with salted caramel, and I’m a sucker for a grown man crying over dessert.”

I bite my bottom lip and try not to feel the strange little pang of it.

Dominic. I know the name from when Grayson and I still texted. He told me about his roommate from Brown, the one who cooked the most elaborate meals, who totaled his car sophomore year, and who followed him back to Maine to get a break before law school. I built a whole person out of those text messages and never once met him in the flesh.

“You’ll be my plus one,” Iris says to me, tapping my hand twice.