“You nearly gave Harcourt an aneurysm today,” I say.
Inhaling, he leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “I don’t wanna talk about that.”
“What do you want to talk about, then?”
“I’m sorry for going behind your back. I shouldn’t have interfered in your shit with Jonah.”
“Ahh. Well.” I give him a sad smile, looking down at my hands. “You’re gonna have to give me a minute. I’m having trouble processing the fact that the great Pax Davis is apologizing for something.”
I figured he’d appreciate me making light of the situation, easing some of the tension that just flooded the room, but he doesn’t smile. “I mean it,” he says. “I’m so fucking sorry. If I hadn’t stuck my nose in, he would never have even been in New York.”
Slowly, I shake my head. “It’s okay—”
“But I’m also mad as fuck at you, Chase.”
There we go. That’s more like it. I sigh, knowing what’s coming.
“You should have told me what the psycho did. You should have told someone—”
“I know. What with my dad, and Elodie and Carrie, and three different therapists, and the cops all saying this to me, believe me, I know. I can’t begin to explain how badly he got under my skin, though. He always could. And I knew how unstable he was. He would have killed me.”
“If you’d have told me—”
“Why would I have done that, Pax? You weren’t my boyfriend. You were just a guy I was sleeping with. A very angry, aggressive guy I was sleeping with, I might add. I had no reason to say anythi—”
“Look at me,” he whispers. “I’ve handled this entire thing really fucking badly. I have. From the very beginning. I don’t—” He huffs, frustrated. “I don’t have any experience with this shit. I’ve never been nice to a girl a day in my life. I don’t know how to do any of this. But I fucking hate myself for not making it painfully fucking clear to you in your bedroom that day that I wanted you. Not to fuck you. Not to carry on with some stupid, pointless arrangement that made no sense. I should have told you that I wanted you. If I had, you probably would have told me everything.”
“I wouldn’t,” I say. “Even if you’d said all that to me, I still would have been too ashamed.”
“Ashamed?”
I duck my head, hiding from the look of shock on his face. “I felt…I feel dirty, Pax. What he did to me…”
“Wasn’t your fault!”
“I know. I know. But that doesn’t stop this disgusting feeling, crawling under my skin. I can’t just erase it now that he’s behind bars.”
I can feel Pax stewing on this, his anger rising and rising. “I’m so fucking sorry, Chase.”
“Stop. Don’t apologize anymore. None of this was your doing. What are we going to accomplish, trying to wrestle blame from each other? Neither of us are at fault. Let’s both just…” I sigh, shaking my head.
“Forget about it?” Pax’s eyes shine brightly. “Move on? Go back to hating each other? Fucking each other? Fighting, and clawing, and tearing each other down?”
A solid lump forms in my throat. “Is that what you want?”
He studies his hands, flexing and then curling his fingers, open, closed, open, closed. He blinks, and I can see every fine detail of his eyelashes captured in silhouette against the light flowing in from the window behind him. Silently, he gets to his feet and crosses the room, coming to sit on the edge of the bed next to me. God, the very nearness of him makes my heart hammer.
“No,” he says. “That’s not what I want.”
He is adamant. His voice doesn’t falter. My heart plummets in my chest, considering the resolution in his tone. He doesn’t want to continue our contentious, aggressive non-relationship. It makes sense, now that graduation’s out of the way. He’s sick and tired of all of this, and I can’t say that I blame him. In his shoes, I’d probably make the same decision. Who needs this kind of chaos disrupting their lives on a daily basis? Only a lunatic would choose to continue down this path. But it hurts—the knowledge that this brief, bizarre thing between us can’t continue.
Pax bows his head, and I can’t help myself: I reach up and gently trail my fingers over the freshly buzzed, prickly hair at the nape of his neck, relishing the feel of it one last time. Pax’s eyelids flutter closed. “I want…” he says, startling me. “I want…things to be easier. Less confusing. I want…more. I just…” A muscle in his jaw feathers, marking his discomfort. Pulling in a breath, he twists to look at me, moving quickly, as if he’s ripping off some sort of Band-Aid. “Like I said. I just don’t know how to do it.”
The words coming out of Pax’s mouth aren’t words I ever thought I’d hear him utter. What is he even admitting here? I shake my head, cutting off the litany of questions. “Wait. Are you saying that you want more…from me? With me?”
During all of the times we’ve kissed, and fucked, and fought like cat and dog, he’s never held my gaze the way he holds it now. It’s as if he’s letting me see him for the first time. Showing himself to me. Opening up a crack in an impenetrable wall—just enough for me to peer beyond at the man on the other side.
“Yes,” he says. “Both. I want to fight with you and get mad at you. I want to finish our fucking book together, and I want to fall out with you over it. And then I want to make up afterwards. I want to hold you. I want to protect you. I want to feel your head on my chest every night when we fall asleep. And I’m cut up on the inside because of that. I’m not supposed to want any of that. I don’t know how to fucking deal with wanting that. But…is any of that what you want? If I put down my weapons here, do you think you can put down yours?” He throws his hands up in the air. “Fuck, Chase. I have no fucking idea what I’m saying. Am I supposed to go down on one knee or something? Write a formal letter of invitation? Some kind of document with a tear-off section at the bottom—” He rockets to his feet. “This is stressful. Why the hell is everyone always so keen to do this shit? It’s a goddamn nightmare.”
Interlacing his hands behind his head, he cradles the back of his skull and sets to pacing up and down at the foot of the bed. The poor bastard looks like he’s about to have a nervous breakdown. “Well? Aren’t you gonna say anything?” He glances at me quickly out of the corner of his eye, then quickly looks away again, as if maintaining eye contact is too much.
The wall’s back up; Lord only knows when he’ll crack it open for me again. I’ll probably need a grappling hook to scale the damn thing if I don’t claim this opportunity and fast. I reach for him, catching hold of his wrist the next time he stalks past me. He stops, jaw working, eyes blazing, chest rising and falling. “I do want all of that. And I only armed myself in the first place because you’re so fucking…you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
I huff out a breathless laugh. “Angry. Terrifying. Unapproachable. Volatile. Aggressive. Sarcast—”