That made his shoulders look even better.

Okay.

Here we were.

I let out a breath.

He heard me, frowning. “Are you okay? You said you were sick.”

“I was. I am. I mean, it wasn’t…” Were we doing this? Already? I felt like upheaving. “We haven’t even had a first date.”

He raised an eyebrow. “I know. That was supposed to be tonight.”

Right again.

“No. No. You wanted to know why I left the next morning, and I said I didn’t want to lie. That was supposed to be for tonight, but you’re here, and I’m now realizing that’s a serious, serious topic, and that’s too early. We had sex, and before that you—” OH DAMN! I’d been about to tell him.

I clamped my mouth shut.

He inclined his head. “I what?”

“Nothing.”

He frowned, cocking his head to the side. “You what? You were going to say something.”

“I wasn’t.”

“You were.”

“Was not.”

His head moved back, lifting, and surprise flared in his gaze. The other side of his mouth tugged up. “Are we fighting about this?”

“We’re not fighting.”

“We’re disagreeing. You were going to say something about me.”

“No, I wasn’t.”

A full-out frown from him, and he edged back a step. He was reassessing me.

Great, now he was looking at me like a mental patient, but for the totally wrong reason.

A slight grin showed on his face. “Look, you’re right.” He scanned me from head to toe. “You seem okay now. Do you want to go somewhere for a drink?”

More drinking.

But, gah. I would need to go back on my meds tomorrow, and I couldn’t take them when I was drinking, and last Friday was supposed to be my last day reprieve. But this, this whole week except one day of forgetting to take them, was why we couldn’t take one-day reprieves. There was no vacation from what I suffered from, not unless it would morph and it would grow, and I would spin and I’d have a night like tonight.

But also, who was I kidding?

This was not going to work, and I might as well scare him away now.

“I can’t do this.”

He didn’t respond.

That was fine.

It plunged the knife harder in my chest, but I had to do this. I had to do this for him.

I had to let that idea go because that was another reason I’d been spinning tonight. Sasha had been right. He wasn’t real. Getting a boyfriend in school was supposed to make things right? But it wasn’t about getting a boyfriend, it was about someone loving me, even just liking me, because so many of them didn’t like me. My mother. Chad. My father. My stepmother. Hunter had been super chill, and thinking about him made me destress, just a bit here.

I needed some Koala Man emailing, but back to the situation in my living room.

Cut was standing, still looking so fucking fine, and I tried to ignore that as I went to the dining table. No way could this conversation happen when I was sitting on my nice comfy couch. If I had to bolt or even ask him to leave, I’d be fighting with my cushions to stand up, and then the whole dramatic effect would be lost.

I sat down and Cut took a seat across from me.

His eyes.

So fierce, but also just knowing me. He was looking at me, like at me at me. How many people have looked at you and not really seen you? Not this guy. Straight fucking through me, and I was stalling. Big time.

Fine. Here we go.

“You know about my junkie mom.”

He dipped his head down. “You mentioned her.”

Right.

Gah.

Six. Times.

And why was I scaring this dude away again?

But I needed to, for him and for me. I couldn’t grapple with the reality that he liked me. That just didn’t make sense to me. Or even make sense to the universe.

“My mom was a junkie. She was a junkie before she had me, while she had me, and most certainly after she had me.”

I waited, because this was the moment when people generally got a different look. Like an, ‘oh, holy shit’ look, like ‘oh, she came from that type of background.’ I’d seen it enough and it never made sense to me because I might’ve come from that environment but that environment wasn’t me. Most people didn’t get that so they had a look.

Cut didn’t have that look. He was watching me. He was listening to me, but I hadn’t shocked him with that revelation. Yet.

I would.

Just wait.

I was just getting to the good stuff.

I kept on, “I was homeless on and off when I was a kid. Spent time with my uncle. Had a stint at my dad’s, and I was so ‘bad’ that they shipped Chad and Hunter to live somewhere else.” He knew about that. “I didn’t even know I had a half-brother until they slipped and mentioned his name. I never did anything. I never stole. I thought the house was super chill because I could get water whenever I wanted, and they fed me. I didn’t have to feel like I was stealing from my neighbors even though I now knew they put out water, sandwiches on purpose for me to take. I had problems. Big problems. Big enough problems that I was half-checked out of reality.” I wasn’t going to list the diagnoses I’d been given. Some were right, some weren’t, and some disappeared over the years. Meds, therapy, but mostly having someone give a fuck was priceless.