Page 76 of Break Your Fall

“What?”

“A new family.”

I laugh now, try to tease. “I guess we all could kinda use a new family now, huh?”

“Why would I want a new family when I have you?” Tommy teases back, but the tease only comes through his voice, a weight to his stare that makes me realize how my earlier statement about family could’ve come across.

“You’re my family, too. I didn’t mean—”

“I know,” he cuts in with a laugh, and I smile.

“Will you stay with me tonight?”

My question settles in the air, floating between our stares a moment before Tommy’s slides to the bed we’re sitting on, and I don’t have to ask what he’s thinking. His face is shrouded in longing and hesitation. He wants to stay with me … but he doesn’t think he should.

“Maybe I should sleep in the beanbag chair,” he offers as an unsure suggestion as he stands, and I stand with him, a nervous tension firing through our limbs. “Or maybe I should go back and sleep in the guest house.” He sighs, dismissing himself as if I already have. He sounds so downhearted as he wavers between staying or going, this moment, this same question I’ve asked before now a struggle because I couldn’t let that one moment in his car go.

I hate this. And it’s all my fault.

“I’m sorry,” he sighs out, finally meeting my eyes again. “When we were lying together on the couch and I had you in my arms, it was both the best and the worst feeling.” I flinch, but I don’t look away from what I’ve caused. “You were right there,” he says, a strain in his voice, a loss in his words, and my eyes sting. “You were so close. I was holding you, and yet I couldn’t reach you. It’s never been like that before. And it’s okay,” he rushes to assure me, not wanting me to take that blame. “It’s just … I can’t feel like that again.”

“I don’t want you to,” I say with a shake of my head, blinking back the sting. “Nothing has to change except the things that do,” comes out as a whisper, a half-attempt to accept that I’m losing, too.

“I mean, most best friends don’t actually share a bed,” he tries to reason with a forced laugh. “I’ve never done that with Camille. Or Julian,” he adds with a face scrunch, and I can’t bring myself to join him in lifting the mood.

“But you have with me,” I point out, and his eyes pin to mine. “So changing it means something.”

Because we mean something.

There’s a visible lump in his throat that matches the one in mine as he gestures to the bed, the movement as limp and low as the accompanying words. “It’s just that.”

“Yeah,” I breathe, nodding along, then I assure him back. “It’s okay.”

He nods along with me as he backs toward the door. “I should go.”

“I don’t want you to go,” I say with an immediate step forward that halts his, already at the door.I still need you.

“I don’t want to go,” he says back, but he’s still at the door, his hand on the knob. There’s a shift in his stare, one I recognize as an unspoken answer to my own thoughts.I still need you, too.

“Then stay.” I wrap the words in an encouraging smile. “For a little while longer. We can talk some more.”

The sigh he releases this time is relieving and stretches my smile. “I was hoping you’d say that.”

We retrace our steps, sitting back together on the foot of the bed.

Tommy can stay. He just can’t spend the night. This is something we can’t compromise on.

I hate thisbreezes through my brain again, but I’ll still have him tonight, for a little while longer.

22

Masterpiece

Thomas

I really should have gone out for wrestling with all the matches I’ve been having with myself over coming here without Reyna. Snooping in plain sight, spying with no cover. But I have a goal, and if I’d fought with myself any longer, I’d have gone crazy.

Reyna’s scared. She doesn’t want to mess up a potential relationship with her father and with her sister, and she’s worried this guy is going to associate her with Valerie. I’m here to make sure that doesn’t happen.

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