Page 44 of Versions Of Us

“What are you doing here?” My voice reverberates off the rafters, filling the silence between us.

“I live here now.”

“You live here now.” I echo his words, my eyes darting back and forth around the room.

There are moving boxes stacked up in the corner, his unmade bed set up on the far wall, the couch from his old house in the corner. The same couch I cried my eyes out on after he called to tell me he wasn’t coming back. It all looks out of place here in this dusty, shabby loft.

“Steve gave me my job back. He’s allowing me to live in his loft until I get a new place.”

Suddenly, I’m angry at Steve. Why the hell would he help him after everything? I feel my nostrils flare, my teeth grinding together in frustration. I narrow my eyes at him.

“You think you can just walk back into town like you never left it?”

“God, Kristen. No. That’s not what…” His voice cracks and then he trails off, averting his gaze as though he’s too ashamed to look at me. Good. He should be. His eyebrows knit together, hooding those baby blues. “That’s fair,” he concedes.

He squeezes his eyes shut tightly and when they open, I see something in them that I’ve rarely seen before.

Remorse.

He drops his gaze to the floor, but he doesn’t say anything.

“I don’t want to see you,” I say in a low voice. I pause, knowing the scathing impact the next words I say will have. And then I say them anyway. “I wish you never came back.”

For maybe the first time ever, he doesn’t try to argue with me, but when I see his jaw tick, it’s obvious I’ve hit a nerve.

His shoulders hunch over uneasily. He sighs as he looks away and then when his gaze returns to mine it’s like an electric shock to my heart. I’d almost forgotten how potent Alex Henley’s stare could be. How his eyes could cut right through to my core and make me feel completely exposed.

Almost.

I’ve hurt him, but the satisfaction I thought I’d gain from it doesn’t come.

I turn, readying myself to walk away once and for all. This is my chance to leavehimbehind.

“Kristen.” The tremor in his voice holds me in place, my hand coming to rest on the door frame. I swivel back to him slowly, shocked to see the glassiness in his glare. “I’m sorry.”

The sincerity in his apology almost breaks me. It’s not like Henley to apologise. I’ve rarely seen him back down from a fight. In the earlier years of our relationship, we’d spend countless hours spitting retaliations back and forth, though our arguments always ended in us wrapped around each other, an entanglement of limbs.

Teenage Henley was stubborn and headstrong, but this version staring back at me is not the same one that left town six months ago.

And I hate that there are questions left unanswered. That I really don’t know why he decided I wasn’t good enough to be the one he settled down and built a life with. But even if he were to answer them now, there’s no way I could trust him to tell the truth anyway.

“Yeah, well. Too little, too late.”

I turn for the stairs, and I run.

Chapter 19

HENLEY

“Wake up, sleepyhead.”

There’s a thud as something soft pelts my shoulder. I groan, still so exhausted I’m unable to open my eyes immediately.

“What do you want?” I try to say, although I’m sure it comes out less than coherent.

My shoulders ache and there’s a stiffness in my back that I know I’m too young to be experiencing as regularly as I am lately. I roll over clumsily on the couch, my long legs hanging over the end of it.

“You’re shift starts in ten.”

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