31. Eric
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
ERIC
Today I learned something clear as day. Yes, I deserve to want, and I am more than my failures, but I’m not ready for anything.
I fucked up on top of fucking up. I did what I’d rehearsed with Val, used every single strategy.
Repetition, movement, sensory grounding.
Still, I lost track of time, spiraled too deep, and left Amanda pregnant, alone, and worried sick.
The adrenaline is wearing thin now, leaving behind shaking muscles and a brutal heaviness in my chest that I can’t climb hard enough to escape anymore.
My body feels wrecked, hands throbbing, shoulders tight, lungs raw from cold air, but self-hatred drums in my chest, fanning the fire that tells me I don’t deserve her.
Back home, the silence thrums with warning, but I’m not giving up.
I’m going to give her what I should have had hours ago. Honesty.
I take off my shirt and decide to shower before we talk. Amanda pushes the door to my bedroom open, walks in, and I turn on the lamp. She’s a sight with flared nostrils, cheeks flushed in anger, and hair a tangled mess.
“I’m owed an explanation, Eric.” When she crosses her arms and cocks her hip, her belly juts out, seeming larger.
“Just let me shower, yeah?”
“No.”
“No?”
“No,” she says again. “You’ve had hours, Eric. It goes both ways, you know. We have to talk to one another.”
A bitter laugh slips out. “That’s rich coming from you, Amanda.”
It’s the wrong thing to say, but my panic is worse now that exhaustion is catching up. My muscles shake when I flex my fingers, and shame settles in slowly and heavily where adrenaline used to live.
Amanda uncrosses her arms and exhales. “I don’t want to keep doing the same thing.” She takes a step toward me. “We kissed.” She points her hands between us. “So, are we moving forward”—she takes another step, closing the distance between us—“or are we backing off again?”
“I don’t want to back off,” I say without flourish.
“Then honesty, Eric.”
Amanda is right. Of course she’s right. Hearing the disappointment in her voice doesn’t make it any easier to look at her.
“I know,” I murmur, dragging a hand over the back of my neck. A sick heaviness takes root in my chest. “I just—I couldn’t stop it, you know? My mind just kept going.”
“You keep thinking I can’t handle your worst, Eric.”
“No.” The word comes out sharp. I pace two steps away before turning back to her, blood bright against my tongue where Diego split my lip. “I keep thinking you deserve better than my worst, and that’s all you keep getting.”
“Do you really think I get your worst?”
“What would you call this?” I gesture wildly between us before scrubbing both hands over my face. “I keep breaking us.”
“You broke nothing today, Eric.” Her voice softens, but she doesn’t back down. “Sure, I’m upset you didn’t lean on me. Nothing has to break between us, though.”
“You don’t kno—”
“Then tell me.” She steps closer before I can retreat again, one hand curling around my wrist. “Because from where I’m standing, you’ve made your house my home.
You’ve thrown yourself into being better for this child.
” Her voice catches slightly. “I think I see now that you didn’t give up on us.
Not the way I did. That’s far from your worst.”
My chest tightens painfully. “And what was my fucking someone that night, Amanda?” I ask hoarsely. “That was—”
“Yes,” she says quietly. “But you didn’t today.”
My eyes snap to hers. “You thought I would?”
The question tears out of me. Pain flashes hot beneath my ribs, shame following close behind it. Of course she did. I disappeared for hours after spiraling in front of her. Diego picked up the pieces of another one of my failures.
“It’s complicated. Seeing you that night… sits in my body, even if I don’t believe you’d do it again.”
‘Sits in my body.’ My hand shoots to my left pec, and I squeeze the muscle, the grasp on her wrist makes her hand follow mine. Maybe both our bodies carry the weight of my choices.
“Stop pulling away.” Her grip on my wrist tightens instead of loosening. “I don’t want your best. I want everything.”
Her desire for me, open and raw, slices between my ribs. It shouldn’t feel this impossible to believe she wants me, that we’re both navigating the wreckage. Unspoken, missing pieces I’ve never said out loud hang between us.
Her green eyes widen, bright and pleading, asking me to trust her with it.
And standing here in front of her with a swollen lip, blood coating the inside of my mouth, sweat dried cold against my skin, I feel held by her.
My whole body trembles from exhaustion, adrenaline, and shame as the reality of how I scared her and Diego settles heavily inside me.
I don’t want to hide from this anymore.
“There’s something really wrong with me,” I admit quietly. “My body doesn’t work right anymore.”
She’s hoping for a breakthrough here, but I can’t form the words. I sit on my bed and pull at my hair. She kneels between my legs, her palms running up and down my thighs. I look up and lose myself in her shining eyes, and take a deep breath.
“Since that night…” I swallow. “I haven’t been able to—” I drag my eyes away from her and rub the back of my neck. “I—”
“Babe.” She cups my face with both her hands and shifts me so I meet her gaze. She gives me a tight-lipped, encouraging smile.
“I can’t… My body doesn’t… I can’t ejaculate.”
She holds my face so I can’t look away, but her brows furrow. “I don’t understand. I’ve seen you—”
“Not since that night.” I lick my lips. “I can—” I clear my throat. “I get hard and can go at it for a while. I get close and then I…” I lift my hands and then let them fall. Her eyes drop to my crotch. “Yeah. Exactly.”
“But you’ve been with people.”
I nod. “I shouldn’t have.” Her touch is too soothing, and I try to pull away.
She doesn’t let me. “I—for a while I thought if I didn’t touch anyone else, you’d come back.
” I clench my jaw at how na?ve it sounds.
“When you didn’t, I told myself I needed to get over it, and, well…
I went off the deep end for a while.” I hide my eyes from her.
“You’ve been using sex to punish yourself.”
I shrug. “Longer than all of this, if I’m truly honest.”
She doesn’t prod, just brushes her thumb against my jaw in silent invitation.
“Sometime in college… Sex stopped being about curiosity and became a reminder of how I wasn’t good enough for you.”
Amanda’s brows pull together as if she doesn’t want to tell me that she doesn’t believe me.
My heart hammers in my chest. Shame spreads in my gut as I lay it all out. “If I can’t keep it in my pants, I don’t deserve to be with you. Fact.”
“You wanted it confirmed. Like that night.”
“Yeah.” I let a long breath out through my mouth, the air scraping my throat.
“By the time you moved back, after falling in the river… I’d already not been with anyone for almost a year.
I wanted to be better in case that we…” I signal between the two of us.
“So I didn’t. At all.” Then I add, “You know I lost it when you told me you were pregnant.”
“I thought you didn’t care for me like that,” she murmurs. “That there was no way you wanted me if…” Her eyes widen like she’s reevaluating our entire history.
“I cared.” My fingers twitch on her skin. “I can’t stand seeing you with other men. Never. Still…” I shake my head. “I’d give you up if I thought Daray would make a good father.”
“Daray is not going to make a good father.” Amanda exhales sharply through her nose, irritation tightening around her mouth. She races her thumb once beneath my swollen lip before it returns to my jaw. “But he knows this about you.”
I nod. “That’s what set me off when you saw him earlier.”
“How does Daray know?”
“Max’s new girlfriend.”
“The girl with the tattoo.”
“She kisses and tells.” I frown when she tenses. “I’m sorry.”
“Can you on your own?”
I shake my head. “Not with anyone. Not alone. Not at all.”
“Eric.” Her whisper is loaded with aching tenderness. “Has anybody ever stayed with you after? Showed you that sex isn’t just about the orgasm or, as you say, the punishment?”
My instinct to recoil shoots sharp through my spine. I try to pull back from her hold, but she strokes my skin, reminding me it’s her.
“I don’t want sex to be about anything else,” I say defensively. Then quieter, because the truth is sitting painfully close to the surface now, “Not unless I’m having it with you.”
Amanda’s mouth curves softly. “Well,” she drawls, warmth threading through the word. “I like that you feel that way about what we could be.” She leans in and touches her forehead to mine, rolling against it. “We’re still a ways away, but if we get there, we’ll discover each other.”
I soak in her touch, the ghost of her breath over my nose and lips. “You’re not leaving over this?”
The answer screams loudly in every inch of me she’s touching, but I need to hear her say it anyway.
She shakes her head and touches her lips to mine. It’s barely a brush, nothing like earlier today, but a reassurance. We got there before; we will get there again if we both want to.
“Do you have anything else you want to get off your chest?”
It feels… anticlimactic. She should be mad or frustrated. Instead, she’s kneeling in front of me, holding on to me while I keep handing her harder and harder truths to carry. My chest aches with the weight of everything I wish I could undo, and I find myself going inward again.
“Eric,” she whispers, and my thoughts still. “The baby is kicking.”
I blink hard while pain and every wrong choice I’ve made surge up at once, fighting for control of me. For a second, they nearly win, but I force myself to push through it instead of retreating into it. My breath catches unevenly, and my gaze drops instinctively to the curve of her belly.
“Do you want to feel?”