Page 116 of Smoke and Glitter

"Badly."

He answers fast enough to make me laugh.

His mouth moves at one corner, but the smile doesn't stay. He leans back slightly and breathes out.

"I'm sorry, Autumn."

There's nothing attached to it.

No explanation waiting behind the apology. No qualification. He looks at me and lets the words sit between us.

My fingers tighten around my cup.

"What I said to Bex was cruel." Sam drops his gaze briefly to his hands. "I didn't think of it that way when I said it, but that doesn't change what it was. I made what we had sound small because I needed it to sound small."

Milk steams behind the counter. Somebody opens the front door and lets in a rush of cold air. Sam waits until it closes again.

"You had trusted me with months of your life by then. You were sleeping in my bed more nights than you weren't. Your things were upstairs. Half the time I started dinner because I expected you before you ever told me you were coming." He runs his thumb once over the side of the cup. "Then somebody asked what you were to me, and I talked about you like none of that meant anything."

The hurt is old enough that I shouldn't be surprised by it anymore.

"You made me feel stupid."

His head comes up.

"I thought I understood what was happening between us. Then I heard you talking to Bex, and suddenly I was the woman who had invented a relationship in her head while the man involved thought it was convenient sex."

"You weren't."

"I understand that now."

"I need you to hear it from me anyway." He shifts forward, his forearms settling near the edge of the table. "You weren't wrong about us. I was."

My eyes burn, but I keep looking at him.

"I wanted you upstairs. I wanted you at Vibes. I wanted your shoes under my furniture and your bag in the way and your shit in my bathroom." His fingers flex once against the cup. "I wanted the life we were already having. Then I went downstairs and acted like wanting all of that didn't mean anything because saying it meant something scared me."

I take a drink mostly because I need a second before I answer.

"You didn't know I heard you when I came upstairs that night."

"No. Bex told me after you left."

"And once you found out?"

Sam looks down at the table, then presses both palms flat against it.

"That's the part I'm having the hardest time living with. You heard me reduce the whole relationship to something easy. You still came upstairs and asked me directly. You gave me a chance to say something different to your face."

His voice drops.

"And I didn't."

My throat tightens.

"I understood enough of what you were asking. You wanted me to tell you what you were to me. Whether I wanted you. You wanted something real that belonged to us instead of having to keep figuring me out from everything except my mouth."

His eyes leave mine for a moment.