“What you just said to us,” Wilder said.
“I don’t even know if I want him as a boyfriend.” But even as I said the words, I heard the lie in them. “It seems really fucking hard, like having to think about someone else, and listen to their bullshit, and give a shit.” No lie that time.
Danny tilted his head. “I mean, yeah, but you already do that for all of us, don’t you?”
Did I? It didn’t feel the same.
“I think that maybe it’s not doing that for someone else that’s the problem,” Danny said. “I think that maybe it’s Lee doing it back for you. Because when you let somebody care about you, you’re giving him a different kind of power over you than you give your friends, you know? Like it’s scary that you could care for someone, and they could break up with you, and that would hurt in a different way than if it was just some dumb shit that happened with me or Wilder, right?”
I got the impression that he’d peppered his speech with maybes and you knows because he knew exactly how it’d go if he tried to read me on facts. He was softening the blow. And the blow was the part where he metaphorically slammed my stupid head against the nearest wall until I got the fucking point. And the point was that I was fucking terrified.
Joke was on him. I already knew that. What if Ididget used to caring about Lee and having him care about me? Could I take the pain if I didn’t get to have that anymore, if I did something dumb and ruined it?
Something dumb like forcing him to dump you because he liked you too much to fuck you without feelings?
There was my chatty fucking brain again. Where had that asshole been the whole rest of my life?
“I don’t know,” I lied, my gaze meeting Cash’s and holding it.
You know.
And whether that was my brain again, or my conscience, or whether Cash and I had finally developed those telepathic powers we’d always wanted, I had no idea. But I knew one thing for sure: I’d fucked up, and unless I was willing to let my past win, I had to step up and make it right.
And I’d never backed down from a challenge in my life.
CHAPTER 18
LEE
Mom wasn’t a morning person, so when I got up on Thursday morning and found her awake, sitting at the kitchen table and nursing a cup of coffee, the first thing out of my mouth was, “What’s wrong?”
She showed me a sleepy smile as she rose to her feet. “Nothing. I just wanted to see you before you went to work.”
“It’s five in the morning, Mom.”
“My friend Emily does yoga,” she said. “She gets up every morning just so she can stretch and see the sun rise. She says it helps her prepare for the day. You know what helps me prepare for the day? As much goddamn sleep as I can get.”
I snorted and said, “Then what the hell are you up for?”
She gave me a look, and I knew.
We’d had a lot of late nights and early-ass mornings in this kitchen, Mom and me, back when Sam was sick, when neither of us could sleep much for worrying. I didn’t miss them at all. And now Mom was worrying again, for me this time.
“I’m fine,” I told her. “Honestly.”
It was mostly the truth. I’dbefine, just as soon as I adjusted to the idea that Chase and I had broken up. It wasn’t as though we had much of a relationship to mourn, but it had felt likethe potential was there. So that was the part I was missing, I guessed. Not what we’d had, because we’d barely had anything, but what wecouldhave had.
And, okay, I was mourning the sex. We’d sure as hell had that, and I was definitely going to miss it too. I didn’t regret not settling for it, though, because I couldn’t imagine going back to Chase and fucking him but nothing more than that. And the more I thought about his offer of going back to no-strings sex, the more annoyed I got that I couldn’t tell if it was me that Chase thought so little of or himself, if he couldn’t see any more value in what we’d had than getting off.
But then I thought of Cash and the story he’d told about Optimus Prime, and my heart ached for eight-year-old Chase, who’d lifted his chin when his toy was smashed up—I didn’t need Cash to have included that detail to imagine exactly what his expression had looked like—and declared he’d never wanted it anyway. And I’d bet that Chase had never touched another Transformers toy after that, just in case anyone saw and figured out how much he was hurting.
To build walls as high as his, you had to lay the foundations pretty fucking early.
Mom studied me for a moment, like she was searching for a lie. Then she said, “Sam’s making dinner tonight.”
“Shit from a jar?”
“Actually, no. She wants to make gnocchi. From scratch.”
