The silence after that was softer than it had any right to be.
And for the first time in days, it didn’t feel empty.
21
Aura
The apartment felt too quiet after Bliss and Charm left.
Not empty exactly, since the couch still looked like a snack aisle had been robbed by women with emotional damage. Blankets hung off the cushions, the movie sat paused on Kristen Wiig’s exhausted face, and a half-open bag of gummy worms slumped against the coffee table leg like it had also survived a crisis.
Easton stood in my kitchen dripping rain onto the floor.
His black KFU Fury hoodie was soaked through, clinging to the width of his shoulders and darkening at the seams. Water beaded in his hair and slid down the hard line of his jaw. His lips had a faint bluish cast from the cold, and the bruising near his cheek had faded to ugly yellow at the edges, making the healing cut near his mouth look worse somehow.
He looked like punishment if punishment had walked through rain to knock on my door.
I hated that the thought made my stomach pull tight.
He watched me from across the kitchen, not moving closer, not giving me the easy thing of space either. He took up the room without trying, broad and wet and exhausted, with one wrapped hand flexing at his side like even standing still cost him something.
“You’re freezing,” I said.
His mouth barely moved. “I know.”
“You walked here?”
“Yeah.”
“In the rain?”
His gaze held mine. “It wasn’t raining when I started. I wanted the walk, though.”
“That wasn’t the question.”
“No,” he said, and his voice was rough enough to make my fingers curl against the counter. “But if I tell you I needed the walk, you’re going to tell me that’s emotionally suspicious.”
“It is emotionally suspicious.”
“Probably.”
I stared at him, trying to find a version of myself that knew what to do with this. The last time I’d seen him, he’d told me to leave. He’d stood in his cheap apartment with every piece of me on the floor between us and told me he had love and anger but no forgiveness.
Now he stood in mine like a man who had either come to save me or ruin me again, and I wasn’t sure I had enough left to survive either one.
“You said you needed to say something,” I reminded him.
He nodded once, but he still didn’t move. His eyes went to the sink, then the floor, then his own wrapped knuckles, like he needed places to put his attention before he could look at me with all of it.
“I’ve been thinking about what I said.”
“That you couldn’t forgive me?”
His jaw flexed. “Yeah.”
I swallowed around the ache. “It was pretty clear, Easton.”
“I know. That’s the problem.”
