afraid she’d given herself whiplash. However, she no longer seemed to be in her fear-addled trance when she asked, “What?”
“Who is Keith?” I repeated.
“How do you know that name?”
Is she serious?
“Addy—” The words died in my throat when her eyes lifted and locked with mine.
Sadness. Fear. Regret. Shame.
Jesus fuck.
“How?” she pressed.
I could’ve very well lied and told her I’d heard the name from a family member, then dig and figure out who this guy was on my own. And it was on the tip of my tongue to do so. I wanted nothing more than to erase the shame. It was that emotion that gutted me. We all have regrets. Everyone felt sadness. And fear was unfortunately a part of life. But my sweet, shy, innocent Addy wearing shame—fuck no.
But in the end, I couldn’t lie. I didn’t want to dig, I wanted Addy to trust me enough to tell me. I wanted the story straight from her.
I also wanted to end this conversation for her, shelve it, and pick it back up when she wasn’t blindsided and overcome with emotion.
“You called me Keith,” I told her and watched her face register shock.
“Trey,” she whispered. “I’m sorry.”
“I don’t want you to apologize. I also don’t want to talk about it right now.”
Addy nodded once and her shoulders hunched forward.
Goddamn.
“Is it okay if I come to you?” I asked as gently as I could muster with all the nasty shit coursing through me.
“Maybe I should just get my stuff,” she mumbled.
“That’s not gonna happen.”
Addy came out of her hunch. Steel infused her spine as she stood tall.
There was my Addy.
“Few things,” I quickly said before she could say anything. “We’ll talk about Keith at a time and in a place where you feel safe to do so. You feeling trapped in my kitchen is neither. Something else—I am not him. Whatever he said and did to you was jacked. And I don’t need you to tell me a goddamn thing about him to know that. You are absolutely, unequivocally correct. I don’t have the right to tell you who you can be friends with, where you go, what classes you take or teach. More than that, I’m not a motherfucking dick, so I wouldn’t try.
“That swings us back around to Bass. I explained already, but I think it bears repeating—the guy wants in your pants. He’s obviously not getting in there. And don’t twist that into me being a motherfucking dick, that’s just straight-up the truth. If you wanted Bass in your pants, you wouldn’t be in my kitchen after the night we had. He wants it, so that means you’re the one that pumped the brakes on that.
“And lastly, you’re not going up to get your stuff so you can bolt. And you’re not gonna do that because you don’t run when times get tough. I know that, not because you’re a Walker and Walkers are not cowards, but because you’re Adalynn. And my Addy is strong.”
There was some emotion that sprinted across her face, but it was so quick I couldn’t decipher if it was good or bad or if I’d pissed her off again.
“Baby, you know what we’re starting,” I told her softly, much calmer now that she no longer looked like bones were rattling in a closet she’d dead bolted closed.
“Maybe it’s not the right time to start something,” she murmured.
“I’d believe you meant that if last night hadn’t happened.”
“People have sex all the time without being in a relationship,” she told me, only her cheeks turned pink and her eyes dropped to the floor.
It hurt, it really did, keeping my gut-busting laugh to a minimum. I tried not to roar with it but her adorably angry scowl told me I’d failed, and failed miserably.
“Addy,” I said through a chuckle. “I’ll give it to you, lots of people have sex who are not in a relationship. But you’re not lots of people, you’re not even most people. You’re my Addy. And my Addy doesn’t have sex with a man because she’s got an itch to scratch. So, yes, we are most definitely in a relationship. But I wasn’t talking about the sex and you know it.”
She had nothing to say to that because I was right, she knew it, so she didn’t bother crafting a rebuttal that would be bullshit and a straight out lie.
In her silence, I continued, “Now, the eggs that you cooked are probably cold but I’m gonna eat them anyway because I’m starving.