Page 116 of On the Breakaway

“Home.”

Wyatt raises an eyebrow over the rim of his drink, his gaze locking onto mine long enough that I know he doesn’t believe me. There’s a knowing look on his face that makes me want to tell him to mind his own business, but he’s probably already figured out exactly where I’m headed.

Whatever.

At this point, I’m done pretending Avery gets to decide this conversation isn’t happening.

If she regrets what happened between us, she can tell me that to my face.

If she thinks I’m turning this into something it’s not, she can tell me that to my face, too.

If she’s decided that sleeping together was a mistake, that we’re only enemies, that she never wants to see me again, or any of the other hundred explanations I’ve spent the last three days trying and failing not to obsess over, then she can look me in the eye and say it.

What she doesn’t get to do is disappear, not after spending a night wrapped around me.

I pull my phone out as I walk through the parking lot, firing off a text before I can think about what I’m doing.

Me: Can you send me your chicken noodle soup recipe?

The reply comes almost instantly. It always does.

Mom: Of course, sweetie. If you’re feeling sick, make sure you get some rest too. Love you.

Despite myself, the corner of my mouth pulls upward.

The recipe follows in the next message, and I use it as a grocery list twenty minutes later while walking through the same store where Avery nearly ran me over with a shopping cart back in January. Somewhere between grabbing carrots and egg noodles, I realize it’s been four months since that day.

Last year, I promised myself to give it a rest. Dating women who don’t feel right and trying to bend the relationship into what I wanted it to be never got me anywhere.

Is that what I’m doing with Avery?

She’s spent four months telling me exactly what she doesn’t want, but I’m still fighting for her to let me in.

She says there’s nothing to talk about, and I’m standing in the produce aisle buying ingredients for homemade soup.

Maybe she was right about the hero complex, because even knowing that I might be doing the same shit I’ve always done, I can’t fight the urge to check on her. Maybe she’s avoiding me because she felt the same shift I did, or maybe I’m too much of an asshole to take a hint. Either way, I’m finding out tonight.

I toss the last item into my cart and check out without hesitation.

Groceries fill the passenger seat beside me as I park outside of Avery’s apartment with the kind of determination I usually reserve for playoff games.

The entire drive over, part of me expected my common sense to kick in. But now that I’m here, staring up at the building with her on the other side of the door, I have no intention of turning around.

I knock once, then wait so long I start wondering if she’s home at all. I knock harder, my patience thinning with every passing second.

The door flies open before I can knock a third time.

“What part of leave it at the door don’t people underst–”

She cuts herself off when she sees me, and whatever irritation I walked in here carrying disappears just as fast.

She’s wearing my shirt.

My fucking shirt.

The oversized black Blades t-shirt she’d stolen the morning after she slept in my apartment. My name stretches across the back, and the sight of it hits low in my gut.

It hangs to the middle of her thighs, the sleeves swallowing half her arms, her hair piled messily on top of her head while she squints at me as if trying to figure out whether I’m real or a hallucination.