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CAM

This was hell.

I’d thought the aftermath with Daniel had been awful, but this post-relationship coexistence with Trev was torture.

I didn’t get angry whenever I saw him the way I had with Daniel.

I hurt . I physically ached for him, and not just for his touch.

After all those years without my friend, I’d had a taste of life with Trev again—of my world being on its axis because Trev was back in it—and now… this.

When we’d talked things through, I’d insisted I wasn’t going anywhere. I’d just wanted the lines to be clearer. I’d meant every word of that.

But now that we were actually living what we’d agreed to, I wasn’t so sure I could keep doing this after all. I needed this job and I needed the room in Trev’s house. Plus he needed someone looking after his kids, at least until the hockey season was over.

But every time I saw him or heard his voice, or every time one of the boys mentioned him, I died a little inside.

I hated myself for not being able to have faith in him that he wouldn’t screw me over if things went to shit.

I hated everything about this situation, especially how inescapable it felt.

I hadn’t spent another night in the place I’d shared with Daniel after I’d busted him cheating, but we’d still had to cross paths.

I’d had to move out and give him back my key.

We’d still worked together for that brief period before he got me fired.

Just that level of interaction—being in the same eleven-thousand square foot gym without seeing or speaking to each other—had been fucking miserable.

And somehow, that didn’t hold a candle to living in the same house as Trev.

Nothing had blown up between us. No one had done anything wrong. We—or, well, I—had come to the painful conclusion that being more than friends was a bad idea.

Since then, it was hard to coexist with him at all.

I missed him as much as I wanted to be far, far away from him.

Sleeping alone was excruciating. I didn’t even care if we had sex; I just missed having him in bed with me.

The nights when he was on the road were a relief because at least we would’ve been separated anyway.

When he was sleeping across the hall, I tossed and turned all goddamned night.

And from the sound of it, he did too. His bed was pretty quiet, but it did make some noise, and the muffled creaks and groans that filtered through the walls as he tossed and turned made me feel even guiltier.

Trev was such a sound sleeper most of the time, but lately, not so much.

Then in the mornings, he’d be bleary-eyed and clinging to his coffee cup as he avoided looking at me.

I had to imagine that every time he left for practice or a game or the airport, he was breathing the same sigh of relief I was.

We didn’t FaceTime when he was on the road anymore unless it was so he could talk to the kids.

After he’d chatted with them, I’d get him up to speed on anything about what was going on in their world, and then we’d end the call.

No more long conversations when we both should’ve been sleeping.

No more sexting after we’d hung up. Just… silence.

It didn’t even feel like we were friends anymore. There was no hostility or animosity, but everything else had evaporated. The banter. The nostalgic conversations about our past life. Just the friendship that had been missing for so damn long.

Three weeks after I’d said we couldn’t do this anymore, I couldn’t take it anymore.

I hurt for him more than I’d ever hurt for Daniel.

I missed him. I wanted to get away from him.

I loved him. I was pissed at him for no rational reason besides “you exist and I can’t have you.

” I was relieved every time he left the house.

I was terrified he was going to fire me and send me away.

It was exhausting, and it fucking hurt. I had to do something, damn it, and every mental flowchart landed on the same solution: get out.

Go back to Seattle? Find another job here in Pittsburgh? Start over someplace else? I didn’t know. Just… get out of this house and this miserable situation.

Sometimes I thought I could hold out until the hockey season was over. Trev could focus on hockey between now and then, and once the off season started, he’d have months to find someone to take my place. That way I wouldn’t be throwing him off his game or leaving him in a lurch.

I didn’t want to hurt him any more than I already had, but this wasn’t getting any better for either of us.

It didn’t help that Trev wasn’t great at hiding how much this was hurting him.

He had always been the type to wear his feelings on his sleeve, and he wasn’t taking this well.

I could see it in the set of his shoulders and the way he avoided looking at me whenever he could help it.

It came out in his voice, which was flatter than I’d ever heard it; not like he was gray-walling me or blowing me off, but like he just didn’t have the heart to put any emotion into his words.

And it showed in his hockey game too.

I was no expert at the sport, but there were nights when Trev seemed to understand the game even less than I did.

When he’d get the puck on his stick and suddenly not seem to know what he should do with it.

Or when a teammate would send him a pass because he was wide open, and the puck would just go sailing past him; that happened sometimes anyway, but it was conspicuously frequent now.

The commentators noticed. His coach evidently noticed, because Trev had been knocked to the third line for the last couple of games. Even the boys noticed.

“I don’t think Dad likes hockey anymore,” Zane said one night as we watched a game on TV.

“You don’t?” I asked.

He shook his head. “He’s playing like my friend Hayden did right before he quit soccer.”

I almost whistled. The lack of enthusiasm was definitely coming through if a seven-year-old could pick up on it.

And I didn’t imagine any of this was going to get any easier for Trev as long as he had to keep coming home to me. It wasn’t getting any easier for me either.

Maybe waiting for the end of the season was a bad idea.

Maybe I needed to rip off this bandage sooner than later.

Or be proactive and find some people in the area who might be able to take my place, so once he hired them, I could exit stage left.

Or… something. I needed to do something to break this tension before one or both of us lost our minds, or before it started doing serious damage to his career.

One way or another, something had to give, and soon.

I couldn’t keep hurting Trev or myself like this.