Page 93 of Never After Us
“Don’t bring up my sex life in here,” Dexter snaps.“Aly and I are actually ...you know ...dating.Taking it slow.Building something meaningful.I want this to be about love, not just?—”
I scoff, loud enough that the sound bounces off the studio walls.“Everything is about sex.There’s no way you’ll last.”
Barret looks at me with an eyebrow arched high enough to reach the ceiling.“Says the man who’s basically playing house with the widow next door.”
I freeze for half a second.
“I’m not—” I point at nothing because nothing is safe to point at.“That’s different.”
“How?”Barret challenges, arms crossed, grin feral.Like he got me, and I can’t escape.
Fucking fantastic.
This is absolutely the conversation I’m not having today.
Or ever.
The silence stretches.
Dexter leans against the console, smirking.“Yeah, Alec.Explain how it’s different between you and Ms.‘Beautiful, you know, but in not an obvious way.’”
“Is that how he described her to you?”Barret cackles.
I narrow my gaze, exasperated with the two of them.Mostly because I don’t know how to respond.It’s not different.
It’s also nothing.
Right?
I rub the back of my neck, annoyed at the way my pulse kicks up, annoyed at the way their eyes drill into me like I’m an exhibit they’ve been waiting to examine.
“It’s not what you think,” I mutter, already bracing for the looks I know are coming.
Barret snorts without looking up.“It’s exactly what I think.”
“Shut up,” I snap, though it’s weak—because I have no counterargument and we all know it.They’ve seen and heard too much already.
Barret keeps going.“You walk her kid to lessons like you’ve been doing it for years.You moved your goddamn studio sessions around to fit her schedule.You make tea.You check on her.And you made mixtapes, Alec.Fucking mixtapes.”
Dex raises a brow.“Tapes, man?That’s practically a series of love letters.That’s practically you standing in the rain holding up a boom box.”
I glare at both of them, because sarcasm is safer than the truth.“I’m being neighborly.That’s all.”
Except it’s not.It hasn’t been for a long time.It’s not neighborly when you memorize the sound of someone’s footsteps.Not when her voice drags you back from the places your mind usually spirals toward.
Definitely not when you listen to every single one of her sighs like they’re telling you secrets no one else is listening for.I’ve spent so much time with her that I can almost tell when she’s happy, annoyed, or sad.That’s ...fucked up.
Me helping her isn’t really about kindness.It’s about her.
It’s about showing up when I could’ve stayed home.About watching the way she curls inward when she thinks no one notices.About how she clutches her mug too tightly on the days she can’t quite hold herself together.
It’s knowing her patterns—when she pretends to be okay and when she’s about to crack.And it’s caring anyway, even when I have no right to.Even when she hasn’t asked for any of it.
Fuck, it’s probably about last night.
She was reading those letters, hands shaking, breath catching, her voice so quiet I could barely hear her—but I felt it.Every word soaked in grief, every bruise she didn’t want to show me.Those letters hurt her in ways she can’t understand, and I’m not sure if it’s that her aunt never shared any of her past with Mara, or that she hasn’t loved with the intensity those two people professed in their letters.
All I could think—all I could fucking think—was how badly I wanted to kiss her.
