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He typed those careful little things and never told me who he was.

And I told him so many things. Parts of me I didn’t even say out loud to people who actually knew me. I told him because I thought he was safe. And, dumbass that I am, I thought he cared.

It was Paul the whole time. Same Paul who refused to speak to me for months. Same Paul who has tried to lock me out of every possible connection to my dead absentee father.

I press the heel of my hand to my chest. Something hurts there. Not an ambulance call, but a tight, stupid ache under the ribs, like my body is embarrassed by how much I believed him.

I want to throw something. I want to open that door and make him explain himself until he falls apart trying.

I know not all of it was bullshit. Bentley cared before he vanished. Paul cared when he carried me home.

Or acted like he did.

“No.”

I grab a T-shirt from the chair and pull it on too fast, trapping one arm wrong in the sleeve. I fight my way through it, furious at cotton, at myself, at Paul and the fact that my dick gives the smallest, traitorous twitch when I remember things wrong.

I wanted him, even after the lie came out. In the hallway, my body blocking him in, my mind going everywhere. It landed where it did.

Get down there.

He didn’t manipulate me. Didn’t even touch me. He was panicked and hard under a towel, and I made the next move.

I look at the laptop. Then at the bed. Then at the wall between our rooms.

This house is poisoned. The whole place feels like it was waiting for me to realize I had already been trapped inside something.

Not by Paul. Not exactly. By the stupid hope I let build here.

My phone is on the nightstand. I grab it and scroll to my chat with Kev. I’ve missed a bunch of messages I don’t really care about reading.

My thumbs hover over the keyboard.

What do I say?

Paul is a lying bastard. He also blew me. And I might still want him. Please advise.

I almost laugh. It comes out like a cough.

No. The emotional stuff is useless. Dangerous. Embarrassing. The emotional stuff will swallow me whole if I let it.

The house is solid. The house is the fight.

Do whatever it takes to get the PV property.

I stare at it. Then add:

I’m not coming back.

For one second, I see Paul’s face last night. Wet, bright, and smiling with me.

I hit send.

I sit on the edge of the bed in my shirt and nothing else, knees apart, hands hanging between them, body cooling badly now.

My chest still hurts.

My fingers still remember the feel of his hair.