Page 96 of What We Break
Reid leans down, kisses the top of Laine’s head, slaps my shoulder, and bounces out of the room. A minute later, the front door slams, and the truck engine roars to life.
The silence that follows is sudden and heavy.
Just the scratch of the utility knife and the faint hum of a lawnmower in the distance..
I focus on the shut-off valve.Lefty loosey, righty tighty. Just do the job.
"Blake?"
I freeze. Her voice is soft, lacking the playful edge she uses with Reid.
"Yeah?" I don't look up.
"Can I ask you something?"
"Sure."
She sets the scraper down. "Have I done something to upset you?"
The question hits me so hard I nearly drop the wrench. I finally look at her. She’s sitting on her heels, arms wrapped around her knees, looking at me with this furrow between her brows.
"What? No. Why would you think that?"
"You've been... scarce." She picks at a loose thread on her jeans. "Ever since that night I came over for dinner. Reid thinks you're just busy with the new restoration contracts, but I get the feeling I might have overstepped. Invaded your space.".
My jaw tightens. She didn't overstep. That's the problem.
It started at the dinner. The three of us around the kitchen island, Reid telling some exaggerated story about a frequent flyer, Laine laughing so hard she almost choked on her water. For an hour, I forgot to be the miserable bastard in the corner. She looked at me when she laughed, dragging me into the joke, and for a second it felt like we'd been doing this for years. Like I belonged there.
Then trivia night made it worse.
The bar. The crowd pressing us together. Her looking up at me with that flushed face and those dark eyes, and my hand on the bar behind her — not touching, but close enough to feel the heat off her skin. Myeyes dropping to her mouth for a fraction of a second before I caught myself and shut it down.
I white-knuckled my glass the rest of the night. Watched Reid kiss her cheek. Watched her lean into him. Watched them be exactly what they are — a unit — and felt like the rot behind the drywall. There, but something you'd rip out if you knew about it.
After that, I stopped coming home before midnight. Took on the Seattle mantel. Slept in the workshop when I could get away with it. Not because she was annoying or intrusive.
Because every time I walked in the door and they were on the couch, or cooking together, or laughing at something on Reid's phone, I wanted to sit down next to them and stay.
And that's the kind of wanting that ruins everything.
"You didn't do anything," I say, and I hate how defensive I sound. "I've been busy. The Victorian mantel in Seattle took a lot longer than I thought it would."
True. But also bullshit.
The mantel took three weeks. I stretched it to five. Because last Tuesday I came home at ten p.m. thinking they'd be asleep, and instead she was curled up on my end of the couch in one of Reid's sweatshirts, reading with her glasses on, and my first thought wasn'tthat's Reid's girlfriend.
My first thought wasthere you are.
Like I'd been looking for her. Like she was supposed to be there. On my couch. In my house. Waiting for me.
I stood in the hallway for three full seconds before she noticed me. Three seconds of letting myself have it — the warmth in my chest, the pull, the whole sick fantasy — before I killed it and said goodnight and went straight to the workshop.
I slept on that couch instead. Because I'd rather wake up with a fucked neck and sawdust in my teeth than sit in my own living room and keep pretending I don't want to touch my best friend's girl.
"Okay." She doesn't look convinced. She bites that luscious bottom lip, and I snap my eyes away. "It's just... Reid talks about you constantly. You're his family. I don't want to be the reason that dynamic changes. I don't want to be the wedge."
You're not the wedge.I am.
