Chapter 17
seventeen
MAYA
I wake with a gasp, my neck screaming from the awkward angle it’s been twisted at for—I glance at my phone—five hours.
What the hell?
I’d been studying cardiac pharmacology when I’d dozed off, but somehow I’d converted a short nap into a legit sleep. And the textbook for that class is not a comfortable pillow, it turns out, and it’s going to take some yoga to iron out these kinks.
But that’s not what has my attention.
It’s the warmth.
The unexpected, enveloping warmth of something heavy draped over me. My fingers find soft, worn fabric, and I pull it up to examine it properly. The overhead light catches faded floral patterns—roses and daisies in dusty pinks and yellows, all hand-stitched together in a patchwork.
Recognition hits me like a slap.
Chloe’s blanket.
The same one I watched Maine retrieve from the closet. The same one he tucked around his sister with such careful tenderness, adjusting the corners just so. The special blanket. The family blanket. The one that means something. For a person who means something.
And it’s on me.
My brain short-circuits trying to process this. Maine Hamilton—six-foot-five of cocky charm and calculated swagger—covered me with his sick sister’s comfort blanket while I slept. The cognitive dissonance is so sharp it makes my temples throb.
This doesn’t fit.
I sit up slowly, the blanket pooling in my lap.
The apartment is quiet, late afternoon sun slanting through the blinds and painting golden stripes across my disaster of textbooks.
There’s drool on my pharmacology notes. Fantastic.
But I can’t stop staring at the blanket, running my fingers over the careful stitching.
Who does this? Who sees their hookup-slash-roommate passed out on the couch and thinks, You know what she needs? My most precious family heirloom?
Maine, apparently.
The same Maine who sent me a crude text about my “great tits” a few days ago.
The same one who’s the biggest peacock in any room.
But also the same one, I’m learning, who cares for others and makes sure they’re OK, even at the expense of himself.
The same one who holds me and makes me feel at home.
The same one who looks at me like I’m a special prize that he wants to win and I’m pretty sure is fighting his feelings as much as I am.
Fucking fantastic , I sigh.
But before I can process this new development, my phone buzzes, the screen lighting up with an incoming FaceTime. For a split second, I wonder if it’s Maine calling, but when my eyes snap to the caller ID, my stomach plummets straight through the floor:
MOTHER.
I could ignore it. Should ignore it, probably. But Eleanor Hayes doesn’t call to chat about the weather. When she calls, it’s because she has something specific to say, usually something designed to remind me exactly where I stand in the Hayes family hierarchy.
Which is somewhere between the pool house and the recycling bin.
I swipe to answer, quickly finger-combing my hair and pasting on my best everything’s perfect smile. The one I’ve been perfecting since I was old enough to understand that Hayes children don’t have problems, they have opportunities for excellence .
My mother’s face fills the screen, her makeup flawless. “Maya,” she says.
No hello, no how are you. Just my name, delivered like a summons.
“Hi, Mom.” I keep my voice bright, channeling the daughter she used to like and approve of, up until the age of about six or so, when I went and ruined everything by having opinions and making choices she didn’t agree with. “You look great. Is that a new?—“
“I’m calling about Clarissa’s wedding.”
Clarissa is my cousin, who I’ve met exactly twice and whose main personality trait is owning horses. And of course she’s getting married. Probably to someone with a yacht and a trust fund and the ability to discuss tax law with the gentlemen at dinner parties.
“Oh, that’s wonderful,” I say, because that’s what you say. “When’s the happy?—“
“Next month. The Ritz-Carlton. Black tie, naturally.” My mother’s eyes flick to something off-screen, probably her computer, where she’s billing some corporation five hundred an hour while casually destroying my day. “The entire family will be there.”
The pause that follows is deliberate. Surgical.
She’s one of the most powerful trial lawyers in America, and she knows exactly how to use tactical pauses to dig the knife in.
And here it is, designed to give me a flash of hope that I might be out of the icebox, but she’s waiting for me to ask the question.
I sigh. “Am I?—“
“Your attendance is neither required nor desired,” she cuts me off.
The words are delivered with the same emotional inflection she’d use to decline a lunch invitation. Just another item on her to-do list: Review Patterson brief, check, call opposing counsel, check, emotionally devastate youngest daughter, check.
I keep the smile plastered on my face even as something inside me crumbles. “I see.”
“Your father and I feel it would be… awkward… given the choices you’ve made lately.
” She says ‘choices’ like it’s a synonym for ‘heroin addiction’, which is probably fair given they consider my choices in degree, career and lifestyle to be about that bad.
“Questions would be asked about your… lifestyle.”
My lifestyle.
“Of course, because studying nursing is like running a meth lab,” I say, unable to resist a cheap shot. “I understand.”
“I knew you would.” There’s something almost like approval in her voice, and I hate how desperately I want to grab onto it. “You were always practical, at least.”
The call ends without a goodbye, and I’m left staring at my reflection in the black screen. I want to throw the phone across the room. I want to scream. I want to call her back and tell her exactly what she can do with her black-tie rectal dysfunction of a family gathering.
Instead, I sit, wrapped in Maine’s sister’s blanket, feeling hollow.
Neither required nor desired.
Four words. That’s all it takes to reduce me to the scared little girl who used to reorganize her bookshelf alphabetically when her parents fought, because if everything was in perfect order, maybe they’d notice. Maybe they’d say, “Look how good Maya is and how she doesn’t cause problems.”
Except I did cause problems, didn’t I?
By choosing nursing over law.
By throwing parties instead of attending networking events.
By being too loud, too much, too everything they didn’t want me to be.
The apartment door opens before I can fully spiral, and Maine stumbles in looking like death warmed over. He’s in his Pizza Plus uniform and there are dark circles under his eyes as he moves with the careful precision of someone who’s running on fumes and determination.
Instead of heading straight for me, trying to get in my pants, Maine gives a half-hearted wave in my general direction while making a beeline for the fridge. Fitting, because if I’ve learned anything about him, he doesn’t function well on an empty stomach.
His hand is already reaching for the handle before he’s fully stopped moving, like a drowning man grasping for the last life preserver on a sinking ship. But when he opens it, his shoulders sag, as the inside light illuminates exactly what I already know is there: a lot of nothing.
On his side, anyway.
His hand hovers for a moment before grabbing the single beer in there, and when he closes the door, he just stands there, leaning against the counter like it’s the only thing keeping him upright. He’s clearly hungry, but there’s no food of his own to eat.
Something inside me cracks at the sight.
Because I recognize that pose and the weight on those shoulders, the exhaustion that goes deeper than just needing sleep. It’s the same exhaustion that comes from pretending everything’s fine when everything is decidedly not fine.
He’s broke.
Really, truly, eating-cereal-for-dinner broke, even with my rent money coming in. And he’s been hiding it behind that megawatt smile and those terrible jokes and the endless parade of shirtless workouts and the mind-blowing sex of the past few days.
Just like I hide behind parties and a carefully cultivated reputation as someone who doesn’t give a fuck about anything.
I’m moving before I really decide to, the blanket sliding off my shoulders as I stand. There’s lasagna in the fridge—my meal prep for the week—so I grab Tuesday’s container and slap it in the microwave. But even as it hums, Maine hasn’t looked at me or said anything.
He’s just staring at that beer like it holds the secrets of the universe, or at least the secret to making it through another week without collapsing.
He probably doesn’t like his housemate (and fuck-buddy?) seeing that he’s got nothing to eat and no money to buy food, so I try not to make a big deal about it.
When the microwave does its work, I don’t say anything. Don’t make a joke about him looking like an extra from a zombie movie. Don’t point out that beer isn’t actually a food group. Instead, I move into his space, and before I can overthink it, I wrap my arms around him.
He goes rigid for a second, like he doesn’t know what to do with gentleness that doesn’t come with a price tag. Then he melts into it, just a little, his chin dropping to rest on top of my head. We stand there in his kitchen, me hugging him like he’s going to disappear if I let go.
But it’s more than that. Because I can feel him letting me hold him up when he probably hasn’t let anyone do that in years. I can feel his exhaustion in the way he leans into me, careful not to put too much weight but unable to stay completely upright.
When the microwave beeps I pull back and grab the container. The lasagna steams as I slide it across the counter to him, along with a fork from the drawer. There are still no words, because I don’t even know what I’d say, but the gesture is clear. He looks down at it, then up at me.
And when his eyes meet mine, the expression on his face hits me like a physical force. Raw gratitude that someone noticed, the look of someone who’s so used to being the caretaker, the strong one, the one who handles everything, that they’ve forgotten what it feels like to be cared for.
It’s the same look I probably had when I woke up under his sister’s blanket.
“Thanks, Maya,” he says.
Two words, more intimate than any of the times we’ve been naked together.