Page 17 of Sunshine

“Don’t get in your head, sunshine,” Wells mutters before pushing his door open, as if he can read my mind. I can’t help but watch as he unfolds himself out of the truck, his black shirt stretching across his back. He rounds the front to open the door for me, and I stare blankly at him. I’m not sure how to get out of the truck, not sure how to face what I just learned about Jay, not sure how to do anything anymore.

Wells hesitates, but then seems to make a decision as he leans over me again to unbuckle the belt. I feel the band slide across my shoulder before his hands are at my waist, gently pulling me to the edge of the seat and lifting me down to the ground. His hands are off of me the second my feet hit the dirt. But he doesn’t back away.

His breath curls around my face, a heady mix of whiskey and wintergreen, and I want to lean into it. Deep brown eyes crowd my vision. “Don’t get lost in that mind of yours. Just . . . come inside. Let me get you warm and tell you what I know. Okay?”

He sounds calm and steady, but I know he’s worried I’ll run. It’s in the way his feet are planted wide, his hands raised in front of him. It’s the same stance I’ve seen him take hundreds of times in the corral when he’s working with a new mustang.

It snaps something inside of me, to be looked at that way. Like I’m a wild animal.

I swallow down a wave of anger and look past him to thelittle cabin, eyes tracing the patterns of grout between uneven stones. “Fine,” is all I can manage to say.

There areempty beer bottles scattered across the wooden coffee table. They must be old—I know Wells wouldn’t have had all this to drink today and then insisted on driving me home. I sit on the green sofa in the living room, uncomfortable in my own skin as I feel him watching me. This cabin is unfamiliar, but the ranch isn’t.

Wells isn’t—the way his presence feels like it’s everywhere.

I watch him take his hat off and hang it on a hook on the wall. And then his focus is back on me, eyes careful as they take me in like I’m fragile, like I might break at any second, and I hate it. Granted, people have been looking at me like that all day, but Wells has never treated me with much softness, and I know his reasons for looking at me like this now are so much deeper than Jason’s death.

There’s a stone in my stomach that rolls uncomfortably—I’m nauseous and tired. But I can’t back down from this. “Tell me everything,” I breathe. It doesn’t come out with the force I expect, and I hate that even more.

He takes a deep breath, his eyes bouncing back and forth between mine. “Layla . . .” He hesitates. He doesn’t make any moves to sit down next to me, only leans against the wall as he crosses one booted foot over the other. “Are you sure you want to hear all of this?”

The stone in my gut grows heavier at the implication. How much could there possibly be? I stare at him blankly, and nod once. “Yes,” I confirm. “Everything.”

He wipes the back of his hand over his brow then crosses his arms over his chest, still watching me so carefully that I might actually vomit again. But then he gives in. “Okay,” he relents. “I caught Jason with another girl in his bed this past spring.” I feel the blood in my veins freeze as time stops on a dime. “I don’t know who she was and I never saw her again, but Jason swore up and down that you and him were on a break, that you’re the one who asked for it. Something about you being in New York and needing some space to find your footing . . .” He trails off.

“That’s not true,” I snap. “I stayed in New York over spring break and Jason wasn’t happy about it . . . we had a fight but I never asked for a break from our relationship.” Chantal and I both decided to stay back that week so we could explore the city like we were tourists. After a long and hard first winter, we yearned to see the city sparkle in the sunlight.

Wells’s eyes grow hard. “It’s what he told me, and I . . . you were always so damn independent, Layla, it sounded legit. I believed him.” He says it like it’s the worst thing he’s ever done, and I’m not sure how to react. “But then summer rolled around and we all came home, and it became real fucking obvious that he was full of shit. You two didn’t skip a beat—I hardly saw him all summer, and I tried to tell myself that you’d just resolved whatever issues you were having, but I knew it was bullshit. I knew he lied.”

“I didn’t see you at all this summer.” I’d wondered if Wells had even come home. After years of the three of us practically attached at the hip, it’d been weird to be home and not see him. It was even weirder that Jason hadn’t mentioned him, but I figured Wells was busy here, on the ranch, or that he’d hooked himself into some summer rodeo circuit.

Now I wonder if he was trying to keep Wells and I apart. I think Jason always knew Wells and I shared this . . . I don’t even know what to call it. A burden? An alliance?

I don’t realize I’m crying again until I feel tears fall into my lap. Wells tracks the movement, and pain flares in his eyes. He shifts against the wall, like he’s going to make a move toward me. But he holds himself back. “I’m sorry, Layla.”

“Keep going,” I urge through a shaky breath.

He takes a deep breath. “I kept my eye on him when we got back to school in the fall, and for a while, things were good. We were both focused on the new season, practically eating and breathing football for weeks. We didn’t go to any parties other than a couple that first weekend back, and the only times I wasn’t with him were when he was in class.”

I brace for the impact of whatever’s coming, knowing it’s close. Wells feels it too, I think, because his eyes fasten to mine.

“You stayed in New York again for Thanksgiving,” he declares, as if he’s merely stating facts. I nod—Chantal’s parents spent the holiday in Europe, and I didn’t want to leave her alone. “Jay and I drove home together, but Jay went back to school early. He said something happened—a fight with his parents. It didn’t make sense because he never fought with them, but he left so damn fast I didn’t have time to get more out of him. I had to ask Kasey to drive me back to school on Sunday because Jay just left me here.

“I tried to ask him about it when I got back to campus, but he shrugged it off. He was acting weird that whole next week, though, staying out late and going to parties on his own. And then I noticed her . . . Emma. She’d been coming to our games and hanging around a lot during practice. Jason couldn’t keep his cool, the fucking moron. It became obvious, you know?”

I close my eyes as more tears escape. There’s an emotion rearing itself under the surface that I’ve never felt before. It’s uglier than anger, more painful than hurt. Shame, maybe? Humiliation?

“I confronted him,” Wells says with a deep rumble. His words are distant. Detached. I open my eyes to find his swimming with his own emotion, and I can’t bear it. The rest of his words come out in a rush. “He told me that you’d broken up, but I pushed back and said I knew he was lying, that I knew he’d lied the last time, too. Things got heated, and I punched him.”

“You what?” I try to picture it, Wells hurting Jason like that. After spending their whole lives protecting each other.

Wells sighs and looks down at his feet. “I told him he had to tell you, or I was going to. And that . . .” His words trail off. After a long pause, his gaze catches mine again and I can see how much he’s struggling through this. “He wasn’t happy about the ultimatum. And he hasn’t talked to me since.” And then he winces, his eyes squeezing shut. “Hadn’t—shit.”

My throat constricts, and I feel like I’m suffocating again. To know Jason was not only sleeping around with other girls and lying to his best friend about it, but that he also seemed to hold little remorse for his actions . . . It makes me feel sick. Nausea tumbles through me, cold and sharp, and I set my gaze on Wells’s face, anchoring myself to him like he’s the horizon on a stormy sea.

“Layla,” he breathes, concern etched around his mouth because my chest is heaving again. I can’t take this anymore . . . this pain. This loss. Fuck Jason. He isn’t here to take the brunt of the anger I’m feeling, and it leaves me aching for an outlet. Ineed somewhere for it to go. “Layla,” Wells says again, firmer this time, “what do you need?”

What do I need? What kind of fucking question is that? I need to scrub the last three hours—no, the last three days—from the walls of my mind. I need to scour this pain out of my consciousness. A lobotomy would help . . . maybe I could convince Wells to hammer a chisel into my skull. I almost laugh at the thought.

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