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p; “Hey. I’m really fucking sorry, Shay.”
“Me, too,” she managed.
He pulled away, picked up his fork again, and took a big bite. “So, consider me your wingman whenever you need.”
The sweetness of the offer was not helping get rid of the sting in her eyes. Or the ballooning warmth in her chest.
“My wingman and my muscle?” She gave him a hesitant smile, part of her not quite believing that they were okay and therefore not quite sure he’d appreciate the humor.
He frowned for a moment and then his whole expression morphed into amusement as he remembered that earlier exchange.
He smirked at her. “You better fucking believe it.”
Over the past ten days, Billy had accompanied Shayna to see three apartments. One with a roommate and two studio apartments without.
And Billy was fucking horrified at the idea of Shayna living in any place remotely similar to what he’d so far seen.
There’d been the studio above the fish store that fucking smelled like death in the heat of the afternoon. There’d been the very clean but twelve-by-twelve windowless box of a studio.
Which just, no. Fuck, no.
And there’d been the sublet with the horror show bathroom, in which the toilet was covered in pubes and the shower surround was outlined in furry mold. Billy had nearly wanted to puke.
No, no, and no.
And that was to say nothing of what she called the ‘cave basement’ and ‘seven-layer-dip’ apartments she’d seen without him.
So far, Shayna was oh for five.
He felt bad for her because she was clearly frustrated and nervous about finding something. But there was also a part of him that fucking prayed every new place would be a nightmare before they walked through the door.
Because something was happening inside him—the more time he spent with her, the less he wanted her to go.
It wasn’t just the apartment hunting, it was that they’d go to dinner after, and Billy would get to try to cheer her up. They ate good food and had interesting conversations and he got to go to bed at night knowing he’d made Shayna Curtis smile. Which was maybe a stupid fucking thing to feel so satisfied about, but he couldn’t deny that it hit him that way—like he was doing something important, something meaningful.
She’d also come to WFC with him again—in large part because she’d wanted to have the chance to see his friends at least once more, and last Saturday was the last day of her week-long visitors’ pass. But it made him wonder if she maybe saw herself moving on from not just his house, but his life—and hell if that didn’t poke at some uncomfortable shit within his chest that he was avoiding examining too closely.
And when they weren’t out visiting potential apartments, they were at home on the couch or at the breakfast bar looking at listings together, because the dearth of decent housing options that she could afford was making him fucking crazy.
In all that time spent together, they talked. They talked about everything.
It was only a slight exaggeration to think that he’d had more deep, consequential conversations with Shayna during the weeks since she’d moved in than with any other single person since he’d discharged from the military.
So much of his life operated at the surface these days.
He was coasting through a job he was good at but didn’t love. He had friends, but not as many close friends as he’d once had. And outside of WFC, there was nothing in his life about which he felt passionate anymore. Once, that’d been the military and the mission and the Ranger creed. Now, he wasn’t sure he gave “one-hundred-percent and then some” to anything like a Ranger pledged himself to do.
Amid all that superficial bullshit, his time and conversations with Shayna stood out as different. Deeper. Important.
Even though the one conversation Billy was dying to have with her they still hadn’t had. About her secret. He’d learned his lesson there.
If and when Shayna was ready to talk to him about the burden she bore, she’d let him know. Maybe she wouldn’t ever be ready, but he was familiar enough with burdens to know that he couldn’t force her to share it. As much as he wanted to know, he had to be okay with that.
Which brought them to apartment number four, for him. A fourth-floor walk-up near Catholic University, which he liked because it wasn’t too far from his house. It was a two-bedroom place and a sublet, and the potential roommate was a thirty-year-old woman who worked as an administrative assistant. Shayna had threatened to smother him with a pillow if he ran a background check.
He’d run one anyway, she just didn’t know it.
“Maybe sixth time’s a charm,” she said hopefully.
