I shook my head against him. “She won’t stop. She never stops.”
“I could throw it out the window,” he said quietly, voice low against my temple. “Might even enjoy it.”
A soft breath of laughter slipped out of me before I could stop it, the sound catching somewhere between tired and fond as my fingers loosened in his shirt.
“Don’t.” I turned my face just enough that my cheek brushed his jaw. “I love my mom. It’s just hard living in her grief and my own guilt at the same time. There’s no space in it.”
My fingers shifted faintly against his chest.
“It’s the not knowing. That’s the part that doesn’t let up. If there was something—anything—you could point to, it would be different. You could put it somewhere. But this just eats through everything. Her from one side. Me from the other.”
The phone buzzed again against the desk.
This time I didn’t flinch.
“I would do anything,” I whispered, my fingers pressed flat against his chest. “I would doanythingto know what happened to him.”
His hand shifted against my back, tracing once along my spine.
“Even if it’s bad. Even if it’s the worst thing I can think of. I just… need it tobe something. Not this open space that never closes.”
My cheek dragged faintly against his shirt. “I think about it all the time. If he was scared. If he thought I left him.”
A shaky breath slipped out, and I pressed closer without meaning to. “If he waited for me to come back.”
His hand spread between my shoulders like he could hold me together by force alone.
“We’re going to find out,” he vowed.
And I almost believed him.
12
ARCHIE
Ididn’t realize I was smiling until my cheeks started to ache.
My thumb dragged along the rim of the coffee mug in front of me, following the same path over and over, something to keep my hands busy while everything else felt…charged.
My lips still burned with the imprint of his.
Shifting in the booth, I pressed my knee into the underside of the table just to ground myself, but it barely made a difference.
Didn’t help that I could still feel him.
All of him.
My fingers stilled against the mug.
Are we…
Are we boyfriends now?
A quiet, disbelieving breath slipped out of me, something halfway between a laugh and a full-bodywhat the hell.
My lips pressed together, and the smile came back anyway, a little helpless around the edges.
“Jesus Christ,” I muttered under my breath, rubbing a hand across my jaw.
