Page 51 of Near Miss

I’m not sure how much time passed. He has this tricky way about him—time slips through my fingers when he’s around.

But it’s not just the time. My mind quiets down and I don’t realize I’m on the precipice of one of my boundaries until I’m right there—toes off the ledge and about to fall to what’s probably an uncertain death.

I should probably ask him to go—the warning sounds start in my brain; the scar twinges and I remember I scribbled all these lines in some sad attempt at a preservation instinct.

You can’t give anything else away,my brain whispers. You’ll give and give and give and then there will be nothing left.

But then Beckett speaks. His voice, still rough in this sort of post-sex haze, rolls across the room, wraps around me, and my brain shuts up because other parts of me like the way he sounds. He points to the remote, sitting haphazard on my bookcase, and then to the TV mounted on the wall across from my bed. “Do you want to watch something?”

And I find myself nodding. I never use it, but Stella insisted on having it for nights she stayed over.

Beckett stays standing, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand, the other pressing aimlessly on the buttons of the remote until the TV flares to life.

I wrinkle my nose, glancing between him and the channel he picks. “I’m sorry, did you just turn on sports highlights? That would be like me coming home and watchingBotched.”

He tosses me a lazy grin before climbing back into bed beside me. “Of course, I have to see what they’re saying about me.”

I pluck at the thin strap of my tank top and narrow my eyes at him. He rubs the back of his neck again before scrubbing his jaw. A muscle ticks in his cheek. I don’t think he wants to know at all, actually.

“You don’t have to do that,” I offer, taking the remote from his hand and changing the channel.

Beckett furrows his brow and raises a hand behind his head, leaning back against the headboard. “Do what?”

“Be someone else. Reliable. Likeable. Who people expect you to be.” I shrug. “You can just be you.”

He stares at me for a minute, slight lines of age starting to show, crinkling around his eyes, and he smiles, nodding slowly. “You sure you aren’t a psychiatrist? Didn’t major in psychology?”

I shake my head. “No. I majored in biology, and I only did one psychiatry rotation.”

Beckett keeps one hand cupped behind his head, the pop of the bicep and triceps in his arm even more defined when he shifts, the other hand finding the hem of my tank top. He toys with it before smiling at me. “Biology. Do you ever think about all the other biological life forms on other planets?”

“I’m sorry, are you asking me about aliens?” I widen my eyes, but a small rasp of laughter sneaks out.

“Fuck yeah.” Beckett nods enthusiastically. “The universe is vast, Dr. Roberts. How do we know what’s out there?”

“Don’t tell me you minored in astronomy.”

“Nah. I didn’t have a minor. Too busy running and then kicking. But I specialized in the French Revolution.”

“That’s . . . niche.”

He sits up, eyes wide, like the French Revolution is a newborn hippo that takes the internet by storm, and everyone should be obsessed with it. “Come on, what’s more interesting than a man rising up from outside nobility, becoming the greatest military mind of his time, naming himself emperor, and betraying the ideals of the very movement that facilitated his rise?”

My nose wrinkles, lips turning down. “A lot of things.”

One of his fingers sweeps up under my top—this casual movement, like he touches me all the time and we weren’t twobarely friends, sort of business acquaintances, who fell into bed together—and it grazes the scar.

His finger stills, and he glances down.

“Is your scar”—he swallows, eyes flicking up to mine—“from the car accident?”

I blink. It’s a simple question, but it’s not exactly a simple answer.

I’m not sure why I tell him. It’s one of the top two things I don’t share with people. But Beckett leans back against the headboard, expression earnest, waves curling around the nape of his neck, thumb and forefinger playing with the hem of my tank top again.

I shake my head. “No. It’s a transplant scar. I donated half my liver to my father when I was eighteen.”

“Because of the accident?”

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