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I spun on him. “Fuck you, Josh! You need help, and I need to help you!”

And then as fast as the anger surged, the sorrow took over. The chains on my mood swing snapped, and feelings broke through my walls like water breaching a crevice in a dam. I began to cry. I didn’t know what was wrong with me. The strength that drove me through my days just wasn’t available to me when it came to Josh.

I dropped the trash bag at his feet and put my hands over my face and sobbed. He wrapped his arms around me, and I completely lost it.

“I can’t stop cleaning and I have a monster inside my brain and I miss you and Sloan is falling apart and his parents won’t take him off life support, so his organs are rotting. I can’t get all the lines right on the carpet with the vacuum and Stuntman is in a kennel and I haven’t seen him in days, and I just need you to let me clean this fucking apartment!”

I’m not sure how much of it he heard, if any. I was crying so hard I could barely understand myself. He just held me and caressed my hair, and for the first time in weeks the velociraptor hunted other prey.

Josh made me weak. Or strong. It was hard to tell anymore what I was without my coping mechanism. At least when I rode the beast, I got shit done. And now I was nothing but an emotional mess.

But at least the mess was mine.

Why did he have this effect on me? He had this way of waking up dormant parts of my soul. He ripped through me and let everything in with him like a storm surge.

I took on water.

And at the same time, something told me if I let him, he’d keep me afloat. He wouldn’t let me sink. I’d never felt this vulnerable and safe with anyone.

I felt hot and shaky. I gasped and clutched his shirt until the crying spasms stopped. He held me so tight my knees could have given out and I wouldn’t have fallen an inch.

“I can’t be the only one who has their shit together,” I whispered.

His chest rumbled as he spoke. “It doesn’t look like you have your shit together…”

I snorted. “Josh, please.” I looked up at him, my hands trembling on his collarbone. “I need you to insert yourself here. Go talk to his parents. They’ll listen to you.”

He looked at me like seeing me cry was agony. The longing on his face was razor blades to my heart. His sad eyes, the set of his mouth, his knit brows.

He loved me almost as much as I loved him, and I knew I was hurting him. I knew he thought I was enough. But I wasn’t enough. How could one of me be any kind of substitute for the half dozen kids he’d always wanted? It just couldn’t. The math didn’t work. The logic wasn’t sound.

He wiped a tear off my cheek with his thumb. “Okay,” he whispered. “I’ll go. Just, sit down or something. Stop cleaning.” He dipped his head to catch my eyes. “Are you okay? You’re shaking.”

He put a hand over mine to still the tremor against his chest, and the closeness of him made me whole for the first time in weeks.

“I’m fine,” I said, swallowing. “Just hurry, okay?”

He looked at me for a long moment, like he was trying to memorize my face or steal an extra second to hold me. Then he turned for the bathroom.

When he walked away from me, the absence of his body pressed into mine felt like I’d lost my clothes and I stood naked and exposed to the elements.

I missed him. No amount of time lessened it. It made it worse. My heart was a neglected building, and every day I weathered a fierce storm that dripped through my roof, flooded my floors, and broke my windows, and the disrepair just made me weaker and closer to collapse.

The water turned on in the bathroom and I looked around the apartment, my compulsion raging back with a fury now that he was gone.

At least I could do this for him. I could take care of his space, give it order. Wash his clothes and his blankets. Make things smell clean, turn his home into someplace he wanted to be. Do this thing that he obviously couldn’t do for himself at the moment.

I blitzed the place. I stripped the bed, threw open the windows. I was washing dishes when the dizziness started.

Why are my lips tingling?

I pressed a shaking finger to my mouth.

And then my vision began to blur…

THIRTY-SEVEN

Josh