Page 84 of Pin My Alpha
The apartment door isn’t locked. Shay never got the key I offered him. He never got to decide if he even wanted one. The thought is small and brutal.
I push the door open.
The apartment smells wrong. Not empty. Empty would be easier.
It smells like us.
Cedar and whiskey. Sandalwood and dark chocolate. Warm cotton. Skin. The faint tomato smell from the pasta I made him. The apartment soaked him up, and now there’s nowhere I can stand that doesn’t remind me he was here.
On the kitchen counter, his toothbrush is still in the cup next to mine. Blue handle, cheap. He bought it at the drugstore down the street, said he wasn’t putting something that had been in his mouth into a cup with mine without knowing where it had been.
I’d laughed. He’d looked offended. Then he tucked it in beside mine anyway.
My hand goes to it before I can stop myself. I just touch the handle with one finger.
It’s ridiculous how much that hurts. I pull my hand back.
His hoodie is hooked over the back of a kitchen chair. Charcoal gray, soft-looking, sleeves pushed up like he always wears them. He must’ve left without it.
I walk past the couch. The guitar leans in its corner, quiet. The blanket Shay curled up under is folded over the armrest—no, not folded. One end is trailing on the floor, like someone got up too fast and never looked back.
The bedroom door is open.
I can see the bed from the hall.
I can see the nest.
It’s worse than the toothbrush, worse than the hoodie.
At first, it was just a few blankets shoved together, one of my shirts mixed in. He acted like he was just tidying up. I acted like I believed him.
Then it grew. Another blanket. My old hoodie. A pillow from the couch. A shirt I thought I’d lost. The knitted throw Milo brought up, probably because he took one look at Shay and decided he needed more soft things in his life.
It’s all there. A careful little island in the middle of my bed.
No. Not little. Shay doesn’t do anything halfway, even when he’s pretending he isn’t doing it at all. The blankets are layered. My shirts are tucked in where they’ll hold scent. The pillows are placed just so. It’s meticulous. It’s Shay.
He built a home here—the guy who swore up and down he didn’t want one.
I step closer. My knees almost give out when I see what’s tucked into the center.
The bar towel.
Green, faded, frayed at one corner. The one I’ve had for years, way longer than I should’ve kept a damn bar towel, but it’s soft from a million washes and it fits over my shoulder just right.
I’d looked for it after the first night he stayed. Couldn’t find it anywhere.
He stole it.
Not as a joke. Not to annoy me.
For this.
I pick it up. It’s heavy in my hands. The cloth smells like beer foam and lemon polish and old wood. Underneath all that, it smells like Shay. His scent has soaked into it, dark chocolate andsandalwood. It smells like him in my bed. Him in my bar. Him pressed into my side when he was tired and refused to admit it.
A sound tears out of my throat before I can stop it.
I sit down hard on the edge of the mattress, the towel bunched in my fist.
