His eyes search my face carefully, almost afraid.
"This doesn't mean I forgive you," I say, voice rough.
"I know," he replies.
"This doesn't mean anything," I add.
Something sad flickers across his expression.
I grab a handful of tissues from my desk, clean my hand without looking at him, and pick up my bag from the floor where I dropped it. My legs are unsteady and my heart hurts.
I walk out without another word.
I make it to my car before the tears come.
I sit in the parking lot with the engine off and cry in the way I haven't let myself cry since that first Sunday—ugly and gasping…the kind that hurts your ribs.
Because I did it again. I gave him my body without getting a real answer. I let the heat override everything I promised myself, and now I'm sitting in my car with his marks on my skin and wet panties and nothing else. No explanation. Just another chapterin the ongoing saga of Kaylee Easton: the woman men enjoy for a few moments and then lie, leave, or both.
I wipe my face with the back of my hand and drive home.
Imogen is already at my apartment when I get there. I don't remember texting her, but my phone says I did.
She takes one look at my face and opens her arms, and I walk into them and fall apart.
We end up on the couch. Wine poured. My shoes kicked off. I make her swear…on my battered, coffee-stained, held-together-with-stubbornness copy ofPride and Prejudicethat has been my most prized possession since I was fifteen…that she won’t say a word to anyone, includingand especiallyher husband, Brady.
She swears, and then the whole story spills out of me like water through a crack—the bar, the fake name, the passion in his truck, and everything up to now.
All of it.
The parts that are angry and the parts that I’m ashamed of and the parts I haven't said out loud because saying them makes them hurt even more.
"The worst part," I say, staring at the ceiling, "is that I can't even blame him entirely. He didn'tforceme. I wanted him. And I let myself have him tonight even though I knew—Iknew—he still hadn't told me anything. What does that say about me?"
Imogen doesn't answer right away. She curls her legs under her on the couch and holds her wine glass with both hands, pressing her lips together. She looks at me directly, and completely without judgment.
"It says you're human," she says. "It says you wanted someone who wanted you back, and that's not shameful. That's natural."
"Well, itfeelsshameful."
"I know it does." She takes a sip. "But listen, the guy who doesn't call, who gives a fake name, who hits it and quits it?That guy doesn't usually stick around at a job with the woman he screwed over. That guy doesn't build roads in the dirt with a little boy. That guy doesn't confess 'everything was real' when he could just let you hate him and make his life easier."
I close my eyes. "Imogen."
"I'm not saying trust him. I'm not saying forgive him. I'm saying...whatever his reasons are, they might be legit. And those are usually ugly and complicated and don't come out clean."
I stare at the wine in my glass and feel the ache in my chest—dull and persistent.
She stays until the wine is gone and my eyes are swollen and I'm too tired to keep talking. She hugs me at the door, tightly, and then she's gone, and I'm alone with the crickets through the open window.
I wash my face. Brush my teeth. Stand in the bathroom and look at myself in the mirror.
My armor is near ruined now…and the rawness spreads, exposed and tender. I spent two weeks building it, reinforcing it, and he took it apart piece by piece.
I know I can't pretend anymore. Not to him, not to myself. The anger was keeping me safe, and now it's dissipating, and all that's left underneath is the terrifying truth: I still want him.
Despite everything, I want him.