Page 9 of Everything But Mine

She’s facing me now. “Thank you for having me.” Her voice is barely above a whisper, with vulnerability that isn’t ever there. Anyone less attuned to her would have missed it.

Before I can second-guess myself, I’m next to Amanda, hands on her shoulders, tracing small circles over her clothing.

When she stares down, silent tears fall on my forearms.

“Hey, hey.” My voice coaxes her to meet my gaze, even when I’m the one struggling to hold it. “Always. You’re always wanted wherever I am.”

Amanda’s breath shudders, her body tenses for the longest second, and as she exhales so slowly, I think she’ll change her mind, she presses her face against my chest.

She’s lowering the drawbridge to this impenetrable moat she built around herself to keep me at bay. As her defenses crumble, the space between us shrinks. It’s been so long since she’s truly let me in.

And that makes it all the more devastating when it goes to shit.

She breathes me in, and within a second, pushes out of my grasp. Her hands flat against my chest to break my hold on her. “I’m crying all over your shirt. Go get comfortable.”

Her attempt at humor falls flat. Amanda’s posture could fool anybody, but her voice and joke won’t fool me. I shoot my fingers out to her so she’ll face me and yell, so that maybe I can whisper the truths between us. With the smell of someone else on me, she withdraws in mind and body. The drawbridge is up again.

“Seriously, go,” she says, like it doesn’t hurt both of us. “I’ll reheat some of this food. I brought takeout.”

I want to bare my soul to her in murmurs and darkness, but I don’t say anything. Not when she’s pulling away from everything I want to dig up. Instead, my arm falls between us in surrender, and I nod, grabbing my tainted jacket so I can lock myself in the bathroom.

With my nerves still on edge, I step out of the bathroom and pad back to Amanda to find an array of Thai food and plates on the kitchen counter. I inhale and close my eyes, reminding myself to give her as much rope as she needs, to let her lead the conversation so she remembers I can be a safe place for her. If only I could stop making the wrong choices at the worst times.

“Food.” She tips her chin to the plates on the counter, her voice flat, distant.

Her gaze focuses on my cheeks rather than my eyes—I hate it. I sit on one of the barstools and flick my eyes to the empty one in silent invitation. We’re both walking on a tightrope, dangerously close to falling.

She adds, “It’s shit Daray likes.” She doesn’t say that I’ll hate it. She knows I don’t like this cuisine, though.

When her elbow bumps into mine as she sits next to me, the heartbreaking domestic ease thumps behind my ears. Moving together with an unspoken rhythm, closeness that comes only from being utterly known by the person next to you. The stool creaks under her weight as she settles. I peruse the dishes of noodles and rice, but I don’t serve myself or her.

“Are you going to tell me what he did?” I ask, with as much steadiness as I can muster, but she’ll hear the edge.

She curls her fingers in her lap, and I purse my lips together until I touch them with the tip of my tongue.

“Fucking Thai,” I mutter, trying a different approach.

She waves her hand at a container of pad thai. “Just eat some, or you’ll get a headache. You still smell like you bathed in a distillery.”

I tip my neck left and right until my spine cracks. “That’s a no? You won’t tell me?” Tension ripples in my jaw as I pile some pad see ew onto her plate and serve her some panang curry—her favorite—but she doesn’t touch it.

“Can we talk about it tomorrow?”

Driblets of water trail down my neck and back, the fabric of my white cotton shirt clinging to my skin where the water touches.

“You want to stay without an explanation?” I shift her stool so she’s sideways, staring at me, and wince at the sound it makes against the floor. “You’re welcome to, for however long. But if I leave my house in the morning and haven’t heard what happened, I’ll walk into that marketing office, Amanda, and I’ll get it out of him.”

“Eric, don’t pull that alpha bullshit with me,” she clips. “It doesn’t suit you.”

I scoff. It’d suit me just fine if I didn’t tiptoe around her.

“Fine.” She goes to cross her arms, then drops them.

“Amanda.” I turn until our knees touch, and softly add, “I will follow your lead. Always.”

She knows I mean it—years of history between us prove it.

She edges closer, as if toying with the idea of letting me in, and then she straightens right back up.