Page 101 of This Wild Heart

Sleep was pointless, so I finally sat up and tossed the covers back, resting my elbows on the tops of my thighs and sinking my head into my hands.

I stared at my phone for a moment and wondered if it was too late to call Vida. Our Vegas trip notwithstanding, Vida was an early to bed, early to rise sort of person. Something we’d always had in common, which was why living together had been so easy.

She’d know exactly what to tell me right now. My eyes pinched shut, because so would Isabel. God, if anything could make me cry, it was that. A desperate ache built under my skin, because I wanted to ask her a million questions. I’d heard the story of her and my dad enough times, she’d know exactly how I was feeling.

What did you do when you fell in love with someone who wasn’t emotionally ready to love you back?

My hand moved toward my phone, ready to damn the consequences of asking her exactly that when the screen lit up with a notification.

One year ago today, it said, and the knot in my stomach turned into a block of concrete. Like I was going to open those pictures. The universe had strange fucking timing, and if it were a person, I’d elbow them in the facesohard. The small preview of the photos in my cloud-based storage folder were big enough that I knew exactly what pictures they were.

The shared folder, training camp photos from last year, would be appearing on someone else’s phone right now too, and I found myself off the bed in the next heartbeat, the phone left on the nightstand.

If he was feeling particularly dimwitted, he might try to do something stupid like text or call, and I didn’t even want to see his name appear.

It felt like a mockery to those pictures now—look, Anya, look at where all this got you. What voice were you listening to for all those years? Your heart was quiet. Your gut knew something wasn’t right. And your brain was silent as the freaking tomb.

We numbed out in so many ways, didn’t we? We chose paths of least resistance when it benefited us, because we were biologically wired to avoid pain, to avoid the hard things we didn’t want to push through.

I wanted to slap my hands over my ears. I wanted to close my eyes. But there was a dangerous rumbling—something ominous building over the horizon, and I knew it would decimate me when that build crested into a painful, messy explosion.

Like navigating a minefield.

Not because of Max, because of me. Twenty-five years old didn’t seem like enough life lived to have these kinds of doubts and regrets. This was supposed to be the time of my life when I lived in blissful, unearned confidence that I knew what the fuck I was doing with my life.

I didn’t. Because all I wanted to do was walk across that hallway and just … be with him.

I wanted to lie in bed with him beside me, holding his hand over the blankets.

I wanted to give him a sweet kiss that didn’t lead to anything else.

I wanted to let him hold me because somehow, impossibly, he’d become one of my favorite people to be around, even when he was dark and broody and sad. When he was cocky and flirtatious and made me want to rip his clothes. When he was funny and thoughtful and showed his incredible ability to make people feel better.

More than anything, I wanted to be in his orbit and absorb the warmth he emitted without even trying because it was so ingrained in him. I wasn’t even sure he was aware of the potency.

My legs bounced restlessly as I turned it over and over and over in my head.

It would make everything harder. Everything.

It’s already hard, a voice whispered. I didn’t know where that voice came from, which part of me, and I didn’t particularly care.

I stared at my bedroom door, which I’d kept open just a tiny crack, and thought about how Parker had described something very similar to this. Messy explosions with every tiny reminder. Except my own form of loss didn’t deserve to hold this same type of pain. The thing I lost was good. It was healthy. Like cutting out an infection you didn’t even know was there, and I was the one who injected it under my skin.

Hadn’t he done the same thing? I’d watched him do it, even if each cut took him a while, and he’d fought it every step of the way, he’d still done it.

I pulled the door open and crossed the hall, pausing outside Parker’s closed door.

He didn’t leave it open, then. My hand curled in a fist at my side, and I couldn’t bring myself to knock. Leaning forward, I allowed my forehead to rest on the trim and let out a trembling sigh.

What was I going to ask anyway?

Hi, can I lay next to you? I promise I won’t mount you in your sleep.

A helpless, breathy laugh escaped because I couldn’t promise that. Not even close.

I lifted my chin and set my jaw because yes, I could. It was okay to admit that I liked being around him. That we were friends, for lack of a better term.

Friends who had given each other orgasms. And kissed occasionally. And … were married.

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