“I’m no good.”
It would take an eternity of nights to soften the edge of hearing those words, and this was only night one. How many nights had he tried to sleep with them haunting his mind? How long ago had he accepted them as true?
Those words coming from such a beautiful voice and attached to such a soul….
They were wrong.Hewas wrong, and only hours ago, I’d longed for the ability to slam my lips to his and will those thoughts into nothingness where they belonged.
But now wasn’t our time, just as it hadn’t been last summer.
I picked up the beginnings of a new kind of composition as light flashed by, illuminating my room briefly. I shimmied out from under my thin quilt, and my bare feet were soundless as I eased over to my bedroom door, which I’d left cracked. Through it I saw a rumpled Cody using his phone as a flashlight, his head bent in defeat as he fumbled to gather his shoes. I stood frozen and watched as he kept pausing mid-task, as if losing himself in all the wrong ways.
I eased my door open further, partly to cut through the somber atmosphere but mostly as a subtle announcement of my presence.
He had my dark-blue knit blanket bundled against him as he glanced over his shoulder.
Heavens, he looked tired. The compulsion to drag him to my bed and force him into relaxed, peaceful sleep was even more intense than my desire to pull him into my arms and kiss him senseless.
We stared at each other for a long moment in a way that you could only do in the hush of night, until eventually he opened his mouth as if to speak but then closed it, shifting his gaze to Bree and Vinh’s closed bedroom door.
Nodding my understanding, I ducked back into my room and grabbed my phone from my nightstand. I started composing a text, but before I made it the few steps to the doorway, I sensed him. My nerves lit up, my skin tingling and rippling with goose bumps as if he’d done something much more than merely exist nearby.
He eased a step into my room, still clutching the blanket to his chest. “I thought you were going back to bed.”
In the full light of day or even the soft light of morning, I might have smiled coyly and made some remark abouthim watching me sleep, but his statement had implications I wouldn’t address here. I couldn’t ignore them either.
The inference that I’d seen him in distress and had decided to turn my back and go back to bed.
That would not do.
I glanced down at my phone and sent the text I’d written, the task admirably distracting me from the physiological response to his presence. He’d asserted his boundaries mere hours ago, and I wasn’t going to disrespect his mind, no matter how misguided it was about his worth.
His phone lit up, and he squinted as he brought it close to his face, illuminating his features from below as he studied my text for a long moment.
Me
Grab your houseboat key and whatever you need to be comfortable.
He glanced up at me, and I took the opportunity to send the next text I’d written while he’d read the first.
Me
Please.
He paused longer at that, until finally, he gave a short nod and locked his phone, casting his face back into darkness, then went back into the living room.
And that… pleased me.
I grabbed my sleeveless hoodie from the top of my dresser and shrugged it on as I followed him out. It was some minor miracle that Vinh hadn’t woken, his sixth sense for unsafe or unsafe-adjacent shenanigans not alerting him to our leaving the house in the middle of the night, but I took it as a sign that this was the right move.
Even so, I took the opportunity to also send a text to my brother that said to not worry if he heard Cody’s truck start, which he probably would, considering how loud the old engine was.
We made the very short drive to the docks in silence, and when we got there, he kept his grip on the steering wheel and his eyes forward on the sunless sky, making no move to turn off the truck.
“I’ve felt like a dumbass all night,” he said to the partially fogged windshield.
He let go and turned toward me, the light from the lot’s security floodlights illuminating him just enough for me to make out his tired, torn expression. “I had you in my arms, LL. In my fucking lap. And I’m afraid I’ve fucked it all up already. Before it even—” He closed his eyes and bumped his head back against the seat instead of finishing the thought. “Talking is not helping.”
I dutifully ignored the slight warmth on my face from his words and the tightness in my skin because he was right. At least partially.
