Faintly, grudgingly, he smiles. It doesn’t last. He glances away, his brow tightening. “I’m so fucking sorry, Harriet,” he says. “If I’d just stayed away this week like I said I would . . .”
I set my hands on his shoulders, and his eyes snap to mine, a current flaring in them. I push down gently, and he sits at the edge of the bed, his head tipped up to study me in the light of the lone bedside lamp. His thighs fall apart as I step in between them, my hands trailing up over his warm shoulders to his jaw. His eyes flutter shut, and he turns his face into my palm, kissing its center.
His hands come to my waist, and I slip my knee over his hip. His eyes open, inky dark, and he takes my weight as I slide my other knee over his far hip, shifting over him.
“This is fighting?” he murmurs.
I nod as I sink into his lap. His Adam’s apple bobs. His hands clutch the underside of my thighs, the bedsheet still caped around my shoulders. He says, “This is what you wore to fight?”
“I’m new to this,” I say. “I didn’t know there was a standard uniform. Do you want me to go change?”
His gaze wanders down me, considering. “Did you pack anything smaller?”
I shake my head. “Not unless you know a good way to wear a toothbrush.”
“We can make do with this,” he says. “Now, what are we fighting about?”
“Everything,” I say.
He cups the back of my neck while his other hand drags me up his lap, fitting us together. “It’s usually easier to start with something minor, and then let it slowly become about everything. At least that’s how my parents always did it.”
“Your parents,” I say, “did not fight.”
“Everyone fights with the people they love, Harriet,” he says. “What matters is how you do it.”
“There are rules?” I ask.
“There are.”
“Like the uniform,” I say.
“Like no name-calling,” he replies.
“What about honey?” I ask.
His hands move to the tops of my thighs, slide back and forth against them, the coarse texture of his palms making my skin prickle and rise. “I’d have to double-check with Parth and Sabrina, Esquires, but I think honey is allowable,” he says. “No jury would convict. Nothing meaner than that, though.”
“What else do I need to know?”
“It’s okay to walk away,” he says. “Everyone says Don’t go to bed angry, but sometimes a person needs time to think. And if you need that, it’s okay, but you should tell me, because otherwise . . .” His jaw flexes on a swallow. “Otherwise, the person might assume you’re leaving for good.”
I swallow too and move closer, our chests melting together. “What else?”
“There doesn’t need to be a winner and a loser. You just have to care how the other person feels. You have to care more about them than you do about being right.”
“This doesn’t sound like fighting,” I tell him.
“This information came straight from Hank,” he says.
I can’t help but smile. “Then I guess we’d better trust it.”
“Do you want to try?” he says.
“Something minor?” I say.
He nods.
“You load the dishwasher wrong,” I say.
He breaks into a smile. “Wrong?”
“Fine, not wrong,” I say. “But in a way that I hate.”
His smile splits open on an exhalation of laughter. “Go on. Don’t hold back.”
“You fill the bottom rack too full,” I say, “and the water can’t get to the top rack. And you don’t rinse things well enough, so even when everything does get soaped, there’s still, like, full pieces of cereal stuck inside the bowls.”
He fights his way back to a somber expression. “I’m sorry,” he says. “You’re right. I hurry when I do the dishes, and it ends up making more work. What else?”
“I don’t like when you downplay your intelligence.”
“I’m working on that,” he says. “And honestly, the medicine helps. So does feeling good at my job.”
My rib cage seems to shrink, or else my heart grows. “Good. You should be at least a fraction as proud of yourself as I am of you.”
“Those,” he says quietly, smiling, “are not fighting words.”
“That’s because it’s your turn,” I say. “You’re mad at me too.”
“I am?” he says.
“Furious,” I say.
He squeezes me to him. “Furious,” he breathes. “About what again?”
Sabrina’s words replay in my head: You’re losing the love of your life because you’re too indecisive to just pick a wedding date . . . Parth saw what Wyn wrote . . . you sat there and let your life happen to you instead of fighting for what you want.
My stomach flip-flops. “Maybe because of the wedding.”
“What wedding?” he says.
“Ours,” I say.
“We didn’t have one,” he says.
“And maybe you think I didn’t care,” I say. “Or that I was afraid to commit to you, and that’s why I couldn’t make any decisions. Maybe you think I was intentionally putting it off.”
He swallows, murmurs, “Weren’t you?”
My head swims at the confirmation, the final piece of the puzzle clicking into place, five months too late. Tears gloss my eyes.
It wasn’t one moment when everything went wrong, when I failed him, when we lost each other. There were dozens, on either side. Missed signs. Dropped lines.
It fucking hurts to realize it. To understand that I made him think I didn’t want him.
“I was trying to be easy, Wyn,” I choke out. “You were so unhappy. And I didn’t want to rush you while you were mourning. I didn’t want to need you when you were in so much pain, so I pretended I was fine. I was scared that if you realized what a wreck I was, you wouldn’t want me, so I pushed you away.”
His mouth softens, but his fingers draw tight. “Harriet,” he says, all rough tenderness, the exact contradiction of Wyn Connor, funneled into one spoken word. “I always want you.”
It takes me a second to get anything out. “Another thing I’m mad about . . . I hate when I hurt your feelings and you don’t tell me, so I have to try to guess what I did and how to fix it. Like tonight.”
“Tonight?” he asks.
“When we got back in the car. You wouldn’t even look at me.”
“Shit, Harriet,” he says. “I was just embarrassed. About this entire fucking week. About dragging you into this situation when it turns out there was no good reason.”
“But when you don’t tell me what’s wrong, I assume things, Wyn,” I say. “And it’s all I can think about. That I’ve messed things up.”
“That’s not healthy,” he says.
“I know, but it’s the truth,” I say.
“Well, I don’t like that,” he says. “You should know you’re safe with me. You shouldn’t spend every moment second-guessing how I feel when I’ve spent eight years telling you outright.”