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“I know.”
That phrase. I’m sorry. I never meant to hurt you. I care about you. Every kind thing I say seems to become another way of making this worse. Kell reaches for the duffel, and panic pushes the next question out before I can decide whether I have any right to ask it.
“Are you saying never?”
His hand stills on the strap, and I hate the question immediately. When he answers, his voice is even. “I’m saying not like this.”
He lifts the duffel, grabs his other boots in his free hand, and reaches for the door.
“Kell.”
He turns back. I have nothing useful to give him. No revelation. No sudden courage. Just the same fear I’ve been dressing in better arguments since the morning I woke beside him. So I say the first practical thing that comes to me.
“Your green shirt is still in the dryer.”
He looks almost startled, and I can imagine exactly how this would have gone before I started pulling away. He would’ve said something ridiculous about me holding his shirt hostage. I would’ve told him he was welcome to rescue it. Somehow we would’ve ended up laughing.
This time he only says, “I’ll get it another time.” Then he leaves.
The condo goes quiet again. I close the door and stand there for a few seconds before returning to the kitchen. The half-destroyed onion is still on the cutting board, the knife beside it.
Eventually, I pick up the knife and finish what I was doing. I don’t want pieces of him either. I just don’t know how to want all of him without being afraid of what that means.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Kell
The couch stops being a bed the Saturday after I got the rest of my things from Laura’s, when Tom arrives with a mattress strapped into the back of his truck.
I’m at the sink cleaning brushes when I hear him pull up. By the time I dry my hands and reach the door, Tom is pointing toward the back room while Locke climbs out of the passenger side.
“Tell me you measured.”
“I measured.”
“Twice?”
“No.”
Tom closes his eyes briefly. “You and Shannon are going to get along beautifully.”
“Shannon likes me.”
“That is exactly what worries me.”
Locke climbs down from the truck. “It will fit.”
“You measured?” Tom asks.
“No.”
Tom looks at both of us. “Wonderful.”
I laugh. It feels good enough that I notice.
The mattress fits. So does the simple metal frame Tom found for it, although getting everything through the back door requires turning the frame sideways and removing one leg after Tom discovers the doorway is narrower than he remembers.
By the time we finish, the old couch is still against the opposite wall, but the back room has a real bed, a small table Carl let me take from his garage, and the lamp I bought two days ago at the thrift store on Elm Street. My clothes are stacked on shelves until I get a dresser, and a kettle and a few dishes have claimed one corner of the workroom.
