Page 59 of Say You'll Never Let Go

“I’m good,” she lies. “Are you?”

Wade nods, but it feels false. Only the start of a conversation he can’t finish.

“I um…I should…” she leans up, wincing at how the most intimate part of her pushes against his thigh. “Take a shower.”

She doesn’t want to leave. She wants to sit here until they hash this out and all the gray areas make sense. Or, to apologize a hundred times for pushing a boundary that’s made him uncomfortable in an effort to soothe his pain.

“Okay. Yeah. Sure,” he replies.

They stare at each other, fleeting and flickering, until she turns to leave. His hand on her arm stops the effort and launches nervous anticipation. She’s ready for him to tell her she’s gone too far and he’s not ready for this kind of closeness with anyone, especially not with her.

That confession doesn’t come. Eventually, his hand falls away in defeat.

Her disappointment is tangible, but she can’t lay this all on him. She isn’t doing much to address the elephant in the room either. She only slides off the bed, grabs a handful of clean clothes, and escapes to the bathroom.

She offered to have sex with her best friend. Worse than that, she made it sound like a suggestion to run errands, as if it meant nothing more to her than a trip to the grocery store. At the moment, being nonchalant seemed logical in an effort to protect her heart, but now she fears it only made things worse.

What the hell was she thinking? Offering to comfort fuck the only person she cares about in this ruined world has got to be the worse decision she’s made so far.

Half a tank of hot water is spent trying not to cry while the other half is consumed with forming a rational plan. One thing is for certain, she can’t explain herself in any way that makes sense. Can’t rip her heart open a second time and wait for it to be flayed. She has to stay rational and matter-of-fact, make him understand that she was only trying to offer him an escape, and if he needed to use her body to feel free from his mind for even a moment, then it’s a price she’d been willing to pay.

She cannot let him know how devastated she is.

She only needs to separate her heart from the matter, which is so much easier said than done.

* * *

Wade takes his turn in the shower before joining her in the kitchen.

She can do this.

It’s what’s best for both of them.

“Wanna make lunch? We can watch those DVDs later. The comedy? Or maybe the mystery?”

He narrows his eyes, suspicious of her false smile. “Alright.”

“Good.”

“Good.”

If there’s one thing Kara is good at, it’s faking it until she feels it. Her only mistake is assuming that he won’t notice.

“I need you to know that we’re okay,” she begins evenly. “What I said last night, what I offered, maybe it was overstepping, and if it was, then I’m sorry. It won’t happen again. But if it wasn’t, and you only said no because of some ridiculous effort to protect me, then you don’t have to. The offer stands. You can take whatever you need from me. It won’t change anything between us.”

He squints, his lips forming a thin line of confusion. “I don’t understand.”

“If you need to, we can. I don’t want you to feel like you can’t come to me, but if you’d rather not, then that’s okay, too.”

All of this sounded practical in her head before she started speaking.

You need the contact. I need it, too. It doesn’t have to mean anything if you don’t want it to.

The knife she’s slicing strawberries with hits the cutting board like it offended her. This should be a simple conversation between two consenting adults and it’s turned into a clusterfuck of her own making.

Wade’s hand closes over hers, stilling her movements until she’s forced to abandon the fruit.

Don’t say it because I already know.