“Ellie?” He steps forward and dips his head down, touching his forehead to mine. I close my eyes. I feel the heat of him, so close, and focus on the steady sound of his breath. In. Out. In. Out. “You aren’t in this alone.”
I’m not sure how he knew it, but those are exactly the words I needed to hear, and gratitude rushes through me and pricks the back of my eyes with tears. “Thank you.”
When he pulls back, his face is too serious. “You have no idea how much I want to kiss you right now.”
“Oh.” I wait, but he doesn’t move forward or dip his head. “Are you going to?”
His gaze drops to my mouth and stays there for three booming beats of my heart. “No.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re still his.”
My heart twists. I’m not even sure what to make of that statement or what to do with the fact that I want Levi to kiss me. Colton and I haven’t even officially broken up yet, and here I am wishing for another man—this man—to put his hands and mouth on me. “He cheated on me.”
Levi gives me a sad smile, the kind that doesn’t stand a chance of making it to his eyes, and the vulnerability in his expression tugs at my heart. “You’re still his. And you will be long after you ask him to move out.” He draws in a ragged breath. “But I’ll be waiting for the moment that you’re not.”
“What the fuck is all this?”
“It’s your shit.” I prop my feet up on the ottoman and glance in Colton’s direction. He’s standing in the doorway, letting the cool air out and staring at the collection of his belongings.
Three industrial-strength black trash bags. That’s all it took to remove him from our house. When those are gone, it’ll be like he was never here.
“Why is all my shit in trash bags, Ellie?”
I shrug. My raw emotions are hibernating somewhere behind my heart, leaving me feeling numb and robotic. “Because I didn’t have any boxes. Will you please shut the door? The air’s on.”
He rubs his eyes and slams the door behind him. He’s dragging his feet like he’s exhausted. Like maybe he was too busy fucking his stepsister to bother with something as mundane as sleep.
The house was empty when I returned from Jake’s, so I started packing Colt’s things.
“You’re kicking me out?” He sets his jaw into a hard line, but when he looks at me, he does a double take. “What happened to your face?”
“I tripped down some stairs.” Anger unravels from my chest at the reminder, and I let it, feeling my cheeks heat and my fingertips tingle with indignation. You cheated on me, you asshole. “Do you want me to help you carry this stuff out?”
He shakes his head. “Just because I didn’t come home last night? Because I partied a little too much? What? Are you my mother now?”
“It’s not because you didn’t come home. It’s because of where you stayed. And with whom.” I want to pull my hair out and scream at him. Instead, I grab a magazine from the basket by the couch and start flipping through it as if it’s just another day. As if this conversation isn’t sending sharp slivers of my heart right through my lungs.
“What do you mean?” He shoves a bag to the side and walks into the living room, sinking onto the couch beside me. He really does look as exhausted as I feel. “You’re kicking me out because I was with Molly?”
“Pretty much.”
“Does it matter if I wasn’t fucking her? Do you even care?” His questions make me want to crumble, to believe anything he’ll tell me. I don’t want to be alone.
I lift my chin and hold tight to my anger. “You lied to me. You said you were having drinks with Grant, but Grant’s out of town. You said you were staying at Jake’s, but you were with Molly.”
“I wasn’t cheating on you.”
“Then why were you at her hotel room in the middle of the night?” I throw my magazine across the room, my fa?ade of calm abandoning me.
“I was—”
“Stop.” I hold up a hand. “Think very carefully before you feed me any more lies.”
“We were talking. Jesus, when did you become so uptight? There’s nothing between us. Not like that. I was with her, but I wasn’t sleeping with her. We had shit to talk about.”
I pull a bottle of pills from between the couch cushions. The thing about packing up someone’s belongings is that you get to see what they have. I found these in the back of the dresser behind his jeans. “What about these? Are you just with these but not taking them? You and the pills are just talking?”
His face pales.
“You promised,” I whisper. “You promised there wouldn’t be any more of this. But it was just another lie. And I can’t do it. I can’t stay and watch you throw your life away. I can’t throw mine away with it.”
“I’m not perfect, okay?” His voice is softer now. Just seeing the pills in my hand seems to have made his anger fade fast. “The last couple of months have fucked my world, and I haven’t handled it well. I get that, but I’m fixing everything now. Let me deal with this, and then we’ll focus on us.”
Colton always has a reason when he relapses, and I’m too tired to hear the excuses this time around. “Is there even an us anymore?”
“I fucking thought so, before you dragged my shit out into the living room.” He shakes his head as he scowls at the bags. “Jesus, Ellie. It’s like I’m some bum you’re kicking out on the street.”
“What did you think we were, Colton? Where did you see this going? You and me?”
He drags a hand through his hair. “You’re just dying for a fight this morning, aren’t you? Well, I hate to disappoint you, but I don’t have it in me. I’m fucking tired, and I don’t want to argue about this.”
“If you want even a minute more with your crap in my house, I want to talk about us. I don’t want to argue. I want to talk about our future.”
“Tomato, to-mah-to,” he mutters. “I don’t want to predict the future. I want to live right now.” He slides across the couch and leans in, closing the distance between us until he’s closer than he’s been in weeks. Months.
He brushes his fingertips along my jaw, sweeps his thumb lightly across the bandage on my forehead, and I close my eyes because my heart aches. I’ve been so lonely. My life is about to change in the biggest way possible. I want to believe he’ll be by my side when I have this baby. I want him to convince me everything’s going to be okay. To reassure me. To be my rock. But he’s never been that. That’s a job he delegated to his best friend from the very beginning. Instead, Colton’s been my thrill. My wild ride. And then he pulled away when I needed him most and he isn’t even that anymore.
“You like to live in the now,” I whisper, opening my eyes to look at him. “And last night, living in the now meant being with her.”
“We didn’t sleep together.” His voice is rough, and for the first time in weeks, I feel like he’s really seeing me when he looks at me. He’s seeing me, and he knows I’m slipping through his fingers. “I swear to you.”
“That’s just it,” I whisper. “I don’t think it matters. Whether you fucked her or not, you’ve left me for her already.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“The late-night phone calls? The way you barely touch me anymore?”
He looks away, but not fast enough to hide the guilt on his face. “I’m trying to help her get through some complicated shit.”
“The fact that she had your kid and kept him a secret from you for four years? Is that what you’re helping her through?”
He’s quiet for a long time. “This is something I have to do. Don’t confuse secrets for a betrayal. You have to trust me.”
“I’m going through some shit too, Colton.” I blink back tears. “A few months ago, I’d have argued that anything we had to face, we’d face together, but it turns out I was wrong. Because here we are, two people on our way to being strangers. I don’t know what your secrets are.” I press my hand to my stomach. “And you don’t give a damn about mine.”