Chapter 12
The knock on my door is soft.
“It’s open,” I call out from the couch where I’ve been wallowing with Patches, who’s been surprisingly sympathetic for a creature who usually shows affection by biting my ankles.
Part of me has been waiting for him.
Jared enters slowly, like he’s approaching a spooked animal. Which is fair. I probably look about as stable as a house of cards in a wind tunnel right now. He’s carrying my gift bag, the one I abandoned at the café like a coward.
“Hey,” he says, hovering by the door.
“Hey.” I don’t look directly at him. I can’t look at him. Not when I know how difficult he finds looking at me.
“You left suddenly.”
“Patches needed her medication.” The lie tastes bitter. Patches stretches out on the couch next to me, perfectly healthy, practically calling me out with her casual yawn.
“Felix…” He moves closer, and I hate how my body responds to his proximity, like every cell is programmed to lean toward him. “Can we talk about what happened?”
“Nothing happened. I just had to go.” I pick at a thread on the couch cushion, unraveling it like my composure. “How was the rest of your birthday? How many slices of cake did Emmy eat?”
“At least seven. We actually lost count.”
Despite everything, I snort.
Jared sits down next to me, not touching but close enough that I can smell his cologne mixed with birthday cake frosting. He sets the gift bag on the coffee table. “I didn’t want to open your present without you being there.”
My stomach does a complicated flip. Even after I ran away, he waited for me.
“It’s probably stupid anyway,” I say.
“Can I open it now?”
I shrug, which he takes as permission. He pulls out the vintage paramedic training manual from the 1970s that I found at a secondhand bookstore, complete with illustrations of people with magnificent mustaches demonstrating CPR. I’d thought it was funny at the time. Now it just seems ridiculous.
He flips through it, a smile tugging at his lips. “This is incredible. Look at these hairstyles.”
“The chapter on ‘female hysteria’ is particularly enlightening.”
“I’ll be sure to study up.” He sets it down carefully. “Thank you. I love it.”
The sincerity in his voice makes my chest ache. Tears prickle my eyes, and I have to glance away.
“Felix, something’s wrong. Talk to me.”
“Nothing’s wrong.”
“You’re a terrible liar. You’re doing that thing where you’re fiddling with your earlobe.”
I immediately stop fiddling with my earlobe. “I don’t have a tell.”
“You have lots of tells. Want me to list them?”
“Not really.”
He shifts closer, and my traitorous body wants to melt into him. “Whatever’s bothering you, we can work through it.”
“Can we though?” The words slip out before I can stop them.
“What do you mean?”
I think about what I overheard, about Sophie asking how he can stand to look at me. About his admission that it’s difficult sometimes.
This amazing man, who saves lives and who spent three hours in the dark keeping me alive with just his voice.
I love him. God, I love him so much it feels like my ribs might crack from trying to contain it.
I love how he makes me feel so safe, how he laughs, and the way he hums when he cooks.
I love how he pretends Emmy’s tea parties are serious business and how he can’t sleep unless his feet are outside the covers.
I love him, and he finds me difficult to look at.
“Do you ever think about what we’re doing here?” I ask finally, lifting my gaze to his. “This whole friends-with-benefits thing?”
Jared swallows. “All the time.”
My heart stutters. “And?”
He bites his lip, not taking his eyes off me. “And I think it’s the best thing in my life right now.”
My heart immediately swells at his words before crumpling like tissue paper in water. The best thing in his life right now. Which means it has an expiration date.
“Right now,” I echo. “But not forever.”
“Felix…”
“I know what I look like, Jared.” The words tumble out faster now.
“I know I’m not the kind of guy someone like you ends up with long-term.
I’m fun for now, I get it. The scarred guy with the tragic backstory who makes you laugh.
But eventually, you’ll want someone you can actually stand to look at without it being difficult. ”
Jared sucks in a sharp breath.
“It breaks me when you talk about yourself like that,” he says.
The gentleness in his voice, the pity, causes anger to flare inside me. It’s so sharp it’s painful.
Annie’s voice is in my head: You deserve better than this.
My hands curl into fists. “What the fuck is stopping you then?” My voice is low.
“What?”
“Oh, come on, Jared, you can’t be oblivious to what’s happening here.
We’re best friends. We spend every fucking moment together.
And now we’ve started hooking up, and it’s beyond incredible.
So what is stopping us from being together, being in a proper relationship?
It has to be this.” I point to my face. “I heard you say as much to Sophie today. You find it difficult to look at me. You don’t want a boyfriend who looks like me. Don’t pretend otherwise.
“I don’t want you to baby me or lie to me to protect my feelings. I’m a big boy, but it’s shit that you keep pretending it doesn’t make a difference when it so obviously does to you.”
Jared’s face flushes and his chest is heaving. He stands abruptly and takes three steps toward the door. “I’ve got to go.”
“Sure. Leave now.” I spit the words out bitterly. “Walk away from this conversation because you can’t admit the truth.”
He spins around, and the look on his face is more ferocious than anything I’ve ever seen.
“I fell in love with you in the darkness,” he says.
I freeze. It feels like my heart has stopped. “What?”
His eyes don’t leave mine. “I never believed in love at first sight, but I didn’t even have to see you to fall in love with you.
I fell in love with you just by talking to you.
Those hours we spent together… You were broken and bleeding, and you still managed to charm me.
” He laughs a raw, bitter laugh. “Oh my fuck, Felix, I’ve never had a connection like this with anyone.
And every moment I spend with you, it just grows and grows.
” He claws his hand through his hair, looking absolutely wrecked, before he fixes his eyes on me again.
“I mean it when I say you’re the most beautiful man I’ve ever met.”
My chest heaves and the tears spill down my cheeks before I can stop them. No one has ever said anything like this to me. Not even before the accident, when I actually was beautiful.
Because he’s saying all of the right words, everything I’ve dreamed of him saying, but it still doesn’t add up.
“So why aren’t we together properly then?” I ask. “What the fuck is stopping this from being the most epic love story in the history of the planet?”
“Because it’s all my fault.” His voice is filled with agony.
“What’s your fault?”
“Your accident.”
I stop breathing.