“What’s that mean?”
“Am I wrong? Didn’t you just stumble in after being out all night?”
As he said it, Elena’s stricken, whiplashed expression became clear. She saw me coming home at sunrise and assumed…fuck.
“She came here looking for me?”
He shrugged like it didn’t matter. “She asked her friend to bring her drunk ass to our house. She was crying your name when she was sleeping. So, yeah, I think she came here to see you. I held her for you, you fucking dick.” He hit my boot with his crutch. “What you’re doing to her is weak. I thought you were better than this, but I misjudged. Going out fucking when you had to know there was a high chance of her finding out is honestly some of the shittiest behavior—”
“I wasn’t fucking anyone. I wasn’twithanyone.”
His jaw squared as he considered the veracity in my claim. I could admit it was pretty hard to swallow on the surface, but weak as I might’ve been in his eyes, he had to know I wasn’t cruel.
“Where were you, then?” he asked.
“Driving.” I exhaled, rubbing some of the grit out of my eye. “I went up the coast, stopped at Pismo Beach, and turned back. I couldn’t sleep, and I had to get out.”
“Couldn’t sleep, huh? Guilt keeping you awake?”
He sounded far too gleeful about that.
“Something like that,” I muttered.
“You made a mistake.” He didn’t form it as a question. He was telling me, and the hell of it was, he might’ve been right.
But nothing had changed. There was no taking back my decision. We were still impossible.
I lowered my chin. “I’ll talk to her. Tell her where I was.”
“Don’t be a dick.”
I pushed out a dry laugh. “I’ll try. Seems like all I’m capable of being lately, but I’ll try.”
I found her the next morning. It was déjà vu, crossing the grass to her deck. As soon as I took the first step, her head popped up from her newspaper. When I’d made this same walk a week ago, I’d been greeted with a smile. The wariness with which she watched me now was entirely different.
My hands were empty, but I didn't expect she’d want anything from me this time.
“Good morning.” I hovered at the bottom of the stairs.
“Good morning.”
I nodded to the empty chair beside her. “Can I sit for a minute?”
“Have at it.”
She wasn’t wearing my hoodie. That had been left neatly folded in the back of my truck last week. I’d wanted to return it, especially when I realized she’d washed her scent out of it, but I knew she wouldn’t take it back.
The other thing that changed from last week was her clothes, and not just the lack of hoodie. Elena had gotten fully dressed in shorts and a tee, with shoes on her feet. I’d never once seen her reading the paper in anything other than her pretty pajamas. I realized she’d been expecting me and had gotten dressed to face me.
Newspaper neatly folded on the table, she waited for me to talk. I swallowed down my daily dose of glass, filling my belly with it.
“I’m doing a shit job of not hurting you.” I rubbed the sore spot on my jaw. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you last night. I was driving all night. I didn’t intend to be gone that long, but once I was on the road, I kept going and going. When you saw me yesterday morning, I hadn’t slept in a solid thirty-six hours. That’s my only excuse for barking at you the way I did, but really, there’s no excuse.”
She finally looked at me, taking in the bruise on the side of my face. “Did Julien punch you?”
I scoffed, rubbing the bruise again. “He did.”
She nodded. “Good.”