Chapter 22
twenty-two
Georgia
Maisy’s house is silent, and my pounding heart is half hoping she won’t be home so I can put this ugliness off. But then a phone ping sounds from the kitchen, and I walk in to find her sitting at the counter, staring down at the screen.
“Hey.”
She doesn’t look up. “Hi,” she says coolly.
I pull out the stool and sit. “I hear Cash told you what’s been going on.”
“Yup.”
“I’m sorry, Maisy. I tried not to let it happen. It just…” Lost for what to say, I shrug. “It just did.”
“Shit happens, right?”
Okay, she’s angrier than I thought. “We didn’t do this lightly, you know. I’ve never felt anything like what I feel for your brother.”
Hurt builds the longer she keeps swiping through her phone, ignoring me.
If only she knew what I felt, she couldn’t hold it against me. “Cash is—”
“I really don’t want to hear this, Georgia. You made your choice, and that’s fine, but the details don’t matter to me.”
Anger bubbles up inside me, taking me by surprise.
The details don’t matter to her? Me finally meeting someone I want to love and who wants to love me back doesn’t matter to her?
She’s just like her brother, so certain she’s right and I’m wrong.
“Well, they matter to me,” I snap, and Maisy finally looks at me, her eyes round with surprise.
“I’m sorry I kept it from you—that was shitty—but I’m not sorry I fell for your brother.
I’m not sorry I found someone who wiped out the loneliness of being here. I can’t apologize for that.”
Her expression melts into a glare. “So it was worth the loss, then.”
I turn my stool so I’m looking directly at her. “What loss?” I demand.
She pulls a face and looks meaningfully at the space between herself and me. “Isn’t it obvious?”
But her victim mentality only pisses me off. “You mean the loss you created?”
“Excuse me?” Maisy says, clearly shocked by my brashness. This isn’t the Georgia she’s used to. Nobody likes me when my fiery side comes out, but they always respect me a little more.
“You’re the one breaking up our friendship, not me and not Cash. Nothing has to change between us—unless you want it to.”
“So I have no right to be upset, Georgia?”
My anger wanes at the hurt in her voice. “You do, and I’m apologizing for hurting you. But I thought we were solid enough to work through it.”
The surprise on her face melts into cold indifference before she shrugs and turns back to her phone. “Whatever.”
I suppress the urge to roll my eyes. She’s not about to forgive me, and I have to accept that. I might want her forgiveness, but at least for today, I don’t need it.
The stool screeches across the floor as I stand up. “I guess there’s not much else to say.”
“Guess not.”
I think about heading up to bed and trying to smooth things over tomorrow, but I know the swirling guilt and anger inside me won’t let me sleep until I know where we stand.
“Listen, I know this changes things. But are we still…I mean, we’re roommates, Maisy.
Are we going to be able to work through this? ”
She keeps her eyes down. “I honestly don’t know. Right now it doesn’t feel like it.”
“Would you rather I start sleeping at my aunt’s place?”
Her brow quirks. “Well, I definitely don’t want to hear you and my brother fucking every night.” She finally gives me her attention again, her gaze even frostier. “So yeah, probably a good idea.”
Hurt cuts through me. “Fine.” I turn to head upstairs, but the thought of leaving it like this between us, even for a few days, is unbearable.
“Maisy, listen.” I face her. “I know you’re mad, but if you let me, I’ll prove to you this doesn’t have to change our friendship.
No matter what happens with Cash, I still want you in my life. ”
Tears sting the back of my eyes when she acts like I didn’t say anything at all.
An hour later, I haul my duffel bag over my shoulder and walk out into the driveway, lit by Cash’s headlights.
He’s smiling as he stands by the passenger door—until he sees my bag. “What’s that for?”
“I’m moving into my aunt’s house.” I stride to the back of the car to pop the trunk, but Cash stops me and pulls the bag off my shoulder.
“She kicked you out?” he asks in a disbelieving tone.
“She didn’t kick me out. I offered to leave like I always planned.”
“Yeah, and I’m guessing she didn’t exactly argue with your offer, did she?” He huffs. “Un-fucking-believable. At this point, she’s just acting like a brat.”
“Let her cool off, Cash. She’s hurt.”
“So are you,” he blurts out. “Fuck this, she doesn’t get a free pass for this shit.”
He drops my bag and takes off for the front door. I make a grab for his arm and he stops, even though he could push right past me. Even through his sweatshirt, I can feel the way his muscles are primed with anger. “Just leave her be. Talk to her when things have settled down, okay?”
“No. She doesn’t get to do this to you without a fight.”
With that, he pulls free and stalks into the house, leaving the front door open in a gesture that, I suppose, is meant to invite me inside to witness what’s about to go down, but I don’t have the stomach for it. I take a deep breath and lean against my car.
It’s only a minute before shouting erupts from inside the house.
“Shit,” I whisper, my stomach twisting. I know Cash and Maisy aren’t shy about speaking up and speaking loudly, but I didn’t grow up in a loud household.
When my parents were around, our house was lively, but there was no yelling.
And after they died, my grandmother’s house was always silent.
The sound of their argument sets me on edge.
It’s only a couple minutes before Cash appears in the doorway, his face drawn tight in anger.
He yanks the door shut behind him and rushes down the stairs.
When he reaches me, his nostrils flare with each breath, but his hands are gentle when they take mine.
“She heard what she needs to hear. Let’s go. ”
After a tension-filled trip to the grocery store, we walk into my aunt’s house, which is dark and infused with the scents of lumber and fresh paint.
“This is what she leaves you with?” Cash sets his bags of groceries on the floor and surveys the kitchen, which has been stripped of its oven, sink, dishwasher, and cabinet doors. He swipes a finger over the countertop—it comes away gray with construction dust. “Real nice.”
“Let’s not get worked up over it,” I say, even though a primitive part of me is turned on by his angry, protective side. “I was going to move in here soon, anyway.”
“Yeah, when the place isn’t a hard-hat zone.” His glare softens as his eyes move from the kitchen to my face. “Come stay with me for a while, would you? I don’t want you here alone.”
I open the fridge—the one appliance still at my disposal—and put away the fruit and yogurt. “No offense, but your house is barely a step above a hard-hat zone on its best day.”
“Hey, princess, we wipe down the counters once or twice a month.” He wraps me in a hug from behind. “I’ll clean it top to bottom if that’s what you want. I don’t like the idea of you being here alone.”
“Doesn’t bother me. Moving in here was always the plan.”
He sighs and nuzzles the back of my head, but I get the feeling his silence is only temporary.
“Tell you what, though. You can ease the transition by spending the night tonight.”
He brushes my hair aside to kiss my neck. “I was already gonna do that.”
Closing my eyes, I indulge in the warm comfort of his lips. Just for now, I’m not going to worry about Maisy or how Cash and I will sustain this; I’m only going to savor what I have.
“All right,” he says after a minute, releasing me.
“You’re going to sit on the couch and sip some wine while I figure out dinner and make this all better for you.
Oh, and here—” He busies himself with his phone until Chopin’s Nocturne begins playing.
“Soothe your soul to the mellow sounds of Frederick Choppin.”
With that, I laugh harder than I’ve laughed all day, fueled by exhaustion, emotion, and the adorably confused look on Cash’s face.
“What? I said it wrong? Chop-in?” he asks sincerely, only making me laugh harder.
“It’s pronounced show-pan,” I tell him once I recover. “But I like your versions better.”
Always a good sport, he chuckles. “Hey, this doesn’t count as a himbo moment. I don’t speak French.”
I lean back against the counter and sigh, indeed soothed by Chopin. “How did you know I love classical?”
“How oblivious do you think I am? Every time I glance at your phone, you’ve got some classical dude on pause.”
For a moment, his sweet devotion absolutely fills his bright eyes, and the fight drains out of me—the fight to be okay alone, to maintain everything as it is, to keep Cash close but never too close.
“My mom would always listen to classical when she cooked dinner. She said it calmed her nerves,” I tell him.
“It was the background music to every family dinner I remember.”
Cash tips his chin in a slow nod, like he doesn’t want to risk stopping me.
“And then it was the only music my grandmother would tolerate me listening to without headphones. I know it’s dorky, but it became my go-to.”
“To calm your nerves?”
I nod. “And to fill the silence.”
The sound of my name rips me from sleep, and I gasp as I bolt upright, my heart pounding.
A single beam of moonlight shines through the crack in the curtains in the otherwise pitch-black room.
I’m tangled in a knot of too-hot blankets, and I thrash around, trying to kick them away, the strangling sensation around my legs fueling the panicky feeling I woke with.
“Georgia? It’s okay, baby, I’m here.”
Cash’s soft, sleep-filled voice near my ear floods me with relief, and I whimper. His hands work quickly to free me from my blankets, and then his face hovers next to mine as he sweeps sweaty hair off my forehead.
“Did you have a bad dream?” he whispers.
I go limp, and his arms curl protectively around me. I have to take a few breaths before I can talk. “Yeah.” My jaw aches from clenching it for who knows how long. “It’s okay, though. You can go back to sleep.”
He doesn’t move. “Want to tell me about it?”
My instinct is to tell him no. I feel wide-awake but exhausted, disoriented by the dream and the still-unfamiliar shadows in the room.
I’ve never told anyone about my nightmares.
But I blink against unshed tears, and as my heart settles and my bad dream comes back to me in snatches, I find the lingering sadness hungry for an audience. “Okay.”
“You want the light on?”
“No.” Already, the furniture is taking shape in the room, as is Cash and the silhouette of his curls next to me.
It soothes me like a balm. “I don’t really know what it was about.
It was more a feeling than anything else—I was alone somewhere impossibly far away from anyone else.
It was like a big break. A rupture I could never fix. ”
“Do you have bad dreams a lot?”
“Not anymore, but I remember this one. I used to have it all the time in the year or two after my parents died.” I close my eyes against the memories. “Pretty obvious what that was about.”
His rough finger strokes my cheek. “Did your grandmother comfort you?”
I pause, searching my long-buried memories. “If she did, I don’t remember it. Maybe I didn’t even tell her.”
“She must have heard you cry out.”
“Her bedroom was far from mine.” The words linger longer than I want them to, and Cash leans down to kiss my cheek. I let the sleepy scent of his body fill the emptiness tugging at my heart.
“What was it like living with her?”
“Really lonely,” I whisper. “I never had any doubt she loved me, but I didn’t feel…wanted, I guess is the word. She took care of me because she loved me and because I was her only son’s child, but that’s all. At least that’s how it felt.” I sigh and roll onto my side to face him.
“She was all you had?”
I nod.
“Aunt Julie?”
“I don’t really know. I remember feeling loved when I was here, but those memories are so old. It’s hard to say what happened.” An unpleasant memory surfaces. “Once I asked my grandmother if I could come stay here again, and she said no.”
“Just no? That’s all?”
“She said it was too big of a job taking care of me.” I search his face, wondering if the scar those words left was simply the result of my being a too-sensitive child in a too-sensitive phase of life. The way his face softens and his eyes close for a long couple of seconds tells me no.
He kisses my nose and cups my cheek in his warm hand.
“I’ll never leave you alone, Georgia, unless you want me to.
I’ll always be here. And if—” He hesitates and shifts in bed, pulling me closer.
“If you decide Maisy’s more important and you and I can’t be together, I’ll still be here.
I don’t know how I’d live with that, but if it’s what you needed, I’d find a way.
I love you, Georgia. The only thing that matters more than you and me is you. ”
The unshed tears from my nightmare finally spill down my cheeks, but they’re not made of fear anymore. “I wish I was as good with words as you are.”
“Just tell me you love me—no better words than that.”
“I love you, Cash.” I turn and bury my face in his chest until my whole world is the feel of him.