Chapter 31 – Waylon
chapter
thirty-one
Waylon
Josie opened the door before I finished knocking.
She was in a gray sweatshirt two sizes too big, with her hair pinned up like she hadn’t looked in a mirror, and her eyes were swollen and flat.
She’d been alone with whatever happened tonight, and it had worn her down.
I took all of it in automatically, the way I took in everything about her, even though I’d told myself not to.
What did he do?
“I’m fine,” she said.
“I didn’t ask.”
“You didn’t have to come, Waylon.”
“I know.”
She stepped back and held the door open, which was progress.
I stepped inside, and she closed it behind me.
The apartment was dim, with just one lamp on, the radiator humming, and her shea butter candle burned down to nothing on the windowsill.
The couch cushions were still dented where she’d been sitting, and her phone was face down on the armrest. I sat without being invited because if I gave her the opening, she’d build a case for kicking me out.
She stayed standing with her arms crossed, watching me like I was a problem she hadn’t solved yet.
“You should go,” she said. “Waylon. You should go.”
Not happening, Flash. Not if you said it a hundred times.
“Tell me what happened first.”
“Nothing happened.”
“Josie.”
Her eyes closed for three full seconds, her jaw working, her fingers tightening on her own arms like she was the only thing keeping herself upright. Then she sat in the chair across from me with her knees pulled to her chest.
That fucked me up more than anything she could have said. Right now she was folded into that chair trying to disappear, and it brought out the part of me that wanted to break things, the part I got from a man I refused to become.
“I went to his place tonight.” Her voice didn’t shake. She’d rehearsed this. “I tried to end it. I had a whole speech. I told him it was over.”
I kept my jaw, my mouth, and my hands locked down.
“He said no.” She picked at a thread on her sleeve, wrapping it around her finger, unwrapping it. “Just that. No. Like it was a purchase he was declining.” She took a shaky breath.
I’ll kill him.
No, you won’t. Sit still. Listen. Do not make this about your anger.
“Go on.”
“He brought up my mom.” Her voice was level, but her lip quivered slightly. “He said his father had kept her employed for nine years. That CPAs are replaceable. That he’d hate to see what it would mean for her to start over at her age.”
I bit the inside of my cheek until I tasted blood. My fists pressed into the couch cushion where she couldn’t see, knuckles grinding against cheap fabric.
I knew that calm. My father had the same steady voice right before everything went to shit, and the quiet was worse than screaming because at least screaming was honest. Kane had figured out early that the soft version left marks nobody could see.
Breathe, Johnson. Breathe through it.
“Then he gave me his jersey. I’m supposed to wear it to tomorrow’s game.”
“Did you take it?”
“Of course not.” She looked at her hands, the thread cutting a thin white line into her finger. “Because the whole time he was talking, I was seeing my mom at her desk with the photos of me on it, and I couldn’t see any other way it could go.”
I wanted to find Kane and break his jaw. I wanted to watch his face change when he heard no from someone who outweighed him by forty pounds. But wanting to commit assault was not the supportive response she needed right now.
I didn’t do any of that.
“Okay,” I said.
“Okay?” Her forehead creased, like she’d been bracing for something bigger than one word.
“Okay. We’ll figure it out.”
She shook her head. “That’s why you can’t be here, Waylon. Every time you get close, you’re in the crosshairs too. Your draft, your scholarship, everything.” Her jaw set. “He knows about us.”
She had told him?
“There’s nothing to know.”
“You really believe that?”
No, the hell I did not believe that. But I wanted to give her time. And I wanted her free. Whatever this was between us had stopped being nothing around the third dawn run, and it had become the only thing I thought about the night I kissed her in the dark while the storm killed the lights.
She’s my weakness, the only one I’ve ever had, and I don’t care.
“I didn’t even get around to telling him.
He’s suspected for a minute obviously.” Her small voice made me want to put my fist through drywall.
“He doesn’t have proof yet, but he’ll find whatever he needs to make sure you pay for being near me.
” She pressed her lips together. “I am not going to be the reason your draft goes sideways.”
It was the same play as always. Push me out, protect me, decide what I could handle without asking.
“That’s not your call.”
“Waylon —”
“It’s not. You don’t get to decide that for me.”
She went to the window and stood with her back to me, arms wrapped around herself, every muscle braced.
I crossed the room in five steps. She heard me coming because her shoulders pulled tighter.
I put my hands on them anyway and turned her around.
She resisted for one second, and then she stopped and pressed her face into my collarbone and breathed.
Hard and shaking. I pulled her in and held her, chin at the top of her head, hand flat on her back, her sweatshirt soft and worn under my palm, and she smelled like shea butter and rain and the ghost of that candle and underneath it the warm scent of her that I’d been memorizing since September without meaning to.
I’ve got you, Flash. I’ve got you.
“He made you afraid,” I said, voice rough against the top of her head. “He’s been making you afraid for three years, and I am —” I stopped and bit back the version that would get me expelled. “I’m angry, Josie. Very angry. And it’s not at you. Has never been at you. Not once.”
She made a sound against my chest, not a word, just a sound, and it got to me.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry that happened to you.”
Her fists closed on my hoodie, bunching the fabric the way she’d held that paper bag of oxtails in my truck — like if she gripped hard enough, the thing inside couldn’t be taken back.
We stood there with the radiator ticking. Her heartbeat slowed against my chest, the shaking stopped, and she leaned into me and let herself be held without explaining it away.
It was easy, holding her and letting her not be fine.
Who takes care of you, Flash? Because I want the job.
She lifted her head. Her eyes were red at the edges, and her jaw was still tight.
“You really won’t go.” It wasn’t a question.
“No.”
Her chin came up the way it did when she’d stopped weighing things and started deciding.
“I want to be with you,” she said. “I know it’s not simple. I know none of this is figured out. But I want to be with you, Waylon.”
I felt that in my chest, and it stayed there.
Say it back. Don’t fuck this up.
I brought my hand to her jaw, thumb where her pulse was jumping.
“I want you,” I said. “Not in the background. Not at five in the morning, when nobody can see. I want you, Josie. All of it.”
Her breath came out ragged and her whole body swayed into me, like whatever had been holding her up had finally given out. Neither of us moved. It was quiet except for the rain.
“We haven’t fixed any of it,” she said.
“I know.”
“Marcus is still —”
“I know.”
“Your draft.”
“I know.” Both hands on her face, thumbs at her cheekbones. “None of that changes what I just said.”