Page 224 of Wrath

I hug him back. “Don’t be sorry. It’s not your fault.” I run my fingers into his hair. “I don’t blame you. Not at all.” I pull away so I can see his face, and I’m surprised to see tears on his cheeks. “Not even one percent, Ez.”

He nods. I hug him again. I’m hugging Ezra. “You wanna tell me your stuff inside?” I ask quietly. “Let’s go to the couch again, or to the bed.”

“You’ve gotta change those pants, Millsy.” I feel him smile.

We walk up the steps, not holding hands this time, but when we reach my level, his hand grabs mine and holds tight as I unlock the door for us.

Inside, I tell him to get himself a drink or whatever he wants, and I step into the bathroom to wash up and change my clothes. When I get out, I find him on the couch, holding a photo that I realize he got from the fridge.

It’s him and me. Ezra is behind me—wrapped around me—and he’s smiling like he’s so damn happy. I’ve got my head leaned slightly back against him, and I look downright blissful.

I don’t even realize Ezra’s emotional until he wipes at his eyes. He does it quick, discreet, so I don’t ask about it, just sit on the couch beside him, wrap my arm around him, and lean my cheek against his shoulder.

“Hey, angel. You found my hidden fridge pic?”

He smiles, or he tries to. He seems drop dead tired, and his eyes are looking puffy. “Yeah. Noticed you had it on the side between the fridge and cabinets.”

“Sometimes I couldn’t look,” I manage.

He runs both his hands into my hair, cupping my face, and then he kisses my lips—so soft and gentle. He gives me a sad smile. “We looked happy.”

“We were.”

He sucks in a deep breath, looking down, and I take his hand. “Come to my bed, angel. Let’s turn off the lights and turn on this light machine we used to like. Plus, I think you owe me a story.”

Ezra

I tell Miller everything, there in the quiet comfort of his bed. I have to force myself to do it.

His face goes still and somber when I tell him about taking the whole bottle of Xanax in my dorm room. I decide that I won’t tell him what exactly set me off—me seeing him with that blond guy in Tuscaloosa. When I tell him about my head-fucked trip to see Luke McDowell, his eyes are huge, but by the end—the part where I tell him I’m now friends with Luke and Vance—he’s grinning, shaking his head, saying, “Only you.”

Somehow, that becomes a segue into his celebrity story—about Dom Bryant. Mills seems anguished when he tells me, but I’m not upset. If anything, it makes me feel good to know he turned down pseudo porn star sex while drunk at a bar—because he was still hung up on me. Me, who left him almost a year before. I ask him about it, and he looks almost embarrassed.

“Loyal guy,” he mutters, rolling over, giving me his back in the bed. I climb over him, stretch out in front of him, and kiss his freckled cheek. “My guy.”

It turns out to be pretty funny, because I find out Miller didn’t know what OnlyFans was until his friend Jenna told him, in a convo about Dom Bryant.

“How did you know?” he asks, looking skeptical.

“I might be fucked up, Miller, but I’m not dead.”

“You’re not fucked up.” Mills wraps himself around me, urging me onto my back, and then he lies on top of me, dropping gentle kisses on my cheeks as he smirks down at me. “So, you jerking it to OnlyFans porn, angel?”

“I don’t think it’s always porn,” I tell him.

Miller hoots, then grins down at me. “Is that a yes?”

“I’m jerking it to screen shots of you doing bench presses on Snapchat. And when I couldn’t do that anymore, I stopped.”

As soon as I say that, I wish I could unsay it. What a downer. But Mills murmurs, “I sorta stopped too.”

“Because of me?”

His lips press flat, and he looks away.

I reach up and give his cheek a gentle slap. “Just say it, bitch.”

He tugs my hair. “It’s because of you, bitch. Because you left me, and I fucking needed you.”

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