Beautiful Graves(94)

“Can’t,” he hisses. His lips are barely moving. He looks strained. The struggle is plastered all over his face. This is the first time during his entire trip to San Francisco he hasn’t looked relaxed and amused. This is the first time I can feel the intensity that used to zing between us every time we were in the same room. The anger. The fire. The desperation in our touch. We both tried to douse it. It didn’t work.

“Why?” I bark out.

He rakes his fingers through his hair, looking down, looking distraught. “Because . . .”

“Because?”

“Oh, fuck it.” He tosses his arms in the air. “Because I’m in love with you, Ever Lawson. I don’t like you. I love you. Never stopped loving you. Not for one nanosecond.”

My heart stammers to a stop. My mouth goes dry. He what?

Joe lets go of me. He starts pacing the room, a caged tiger new to captivity. He rolls his shoulders, breaking free of imaginary bonds. He looks like he wants to rip his skin off his body. Like he is allergic to this new, uncharted feeling.

“You think I enjoy being your friend?” he spits out. “It’s torture! But I don’t know what else to do. You’re not ready for a relationship, and even if you were, I have no idea what something like that might look like. You don’t even know what state you want to live in, for fuck’s sake. You haven’t even removed the goddamn engagement ring he gave you. Every time I see it, I’m reminded of your choice. Spoiler alert: it wasn’t me.”

“You weren’t even an option the second time around.” I’m surprised by my own words. “We both chose him to protect me.”

“Yes.” He breathes out. “We did. He always came first. But I burned for you every single day, Ever.”

His eyes drop to the ring. I instinctively wrap my fingers around it. The ring is a souvenir from when Dom was alive, and that he loved me. That no matter what he did to me—how badly it ended—he still taught me how to live. Like a baby taking her first steps, I wobbled my way into life, and no matter how much I resent him for the way he behaved, I cannot forget how good he was to me.

“He cheated on you,” Joe snarls. “And I had to sit there and watch you fall in love with him, knowing he was screwing another woman behind your back.”

“Stop.” I grab the hem of his shirt, trying to tug him to me. He shakes me off. “Stop talking, Joe.”

He turns around, maintaining a safe distance from me. “Did you ever think why he stayed with you? It was why he did all things—his fear of loss. This is how screwed-up Dom was. He feared being alone more than he did being with the wrong person.”

“Joe,” I warn. “Joe, stop.”

“Don’t think that I can’t live without you, Ever. I can. I just don’t want to.”

“Bullshit!” I cry out.

“Honest-to-God truth,” he slams back.

“So why did you cut off all contact with me?” My eyes fill with tears. It was so hard to spend months of my life not speaking to him.

Joe closes his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“Because I didn’t want to be your coping mechanism. Your rebound. Your designated mistake after going through something traumatic. The reason why I was so pissed with you when you left after we had sex wasn’t because I had an issue with what we did to Dom. In a way, I think we’d have done him a favor. Dom was in love with Sarah. So much so he didn’t have the balls to break up with her and move on. The only reason he stayed with you was because you were his plan B. It was sickening to watch both of you making a terrible choice and not being able to step in and stop you. And then he died, and through all the pain, and the guilt of being alive, of surviving, of not being able to stop it somehow, the only sliver of light was that you were both spared from having a terrible marriage. After we slept together, I felt used by you. A consolation prize. Like you screwed me just to prove a point to yourself. That you still could.”

I shake my head. “I slept with you because I’d thought about you every night, ever since Christmas,” I say, choking out the words. “Because I love you. God, Joe, I love you so much.”

Joe’s shoulders sag with relief. He shakes his head. There’s still an invisible barrier between us. I’m glad it’s there, humming, reminding us not to get close.

“Okay. Good. This is good. So you love me and I love you. Case closed. Move back to Massachusetts, and we’ll pick up where we left off in Spain. It doesn’t have to be complicated,” he says.

Rubbing at my forehead, I look around the room. “What’ll people think?”

“That we look cute together?” he drawls coolly.

“No one will accept us as a couple.” I get flustered. “I wish things were easier. If only Dom had known that I was your Everlynne—”

“Actually, I thought about that,” Joe says, cutting me off. “On the plane on my way here. I’m pretty sure he knew.”

“Knew? What do you mean?”

He takes my hand and pulls me to the edge of the bed. We plop down. His eyes are sharp and alert. Maybe even a little manic.

“Dom had the memory of an elephant. Mom always joked about it. He remembered everything,” Joe says. “Birthdays, historical dates, random people we went to school with. And I talked about you a lot.”