“I’m not backing anywhere! He wanted out!”

My mother gasped, breathed heavily through lingered seconds, then queried, “My God. Why are you yelling?”

“Are you serious?” I sat up, punched the mattress with my fist, and cried, “You’re making me crazy! That’s why I’m yelling.”

My face and neck warmed in exhausted anger.

How could she throw all of this on me? I didn’t understand her. She knew Marcus was the one who ended things. I’d told her the entire play-by-play three nights ago, and it’s my fault?

Was she serious?

“Marriage is a covenant, Sydney,” she started again in a soothing but instructive tone.

I pressed my lips together so tightly I could feel my pulse against my teeth.

“An unbreakable vow between you, Marcus, and God. Now, I’m not saying I ever thought much of your husband, because truth be told, I didn’t. Thought my baby girl could do a thousand times better, but you chose him, vowed to him, ’til death do you part, and that is not something you should take lightly and just throw away when things aren’t working.”

“I didn’t throw anything away,” I replied after taking a breath, willing my battering heart to slow.

“Well, it sure sounds like you did,” my mother argued. “And divorce is not an option.”

“Do you even hear yourself, Mom? What about women in abusive relationships? Or adultery? What if Marcus would’ve cheated, would divorce be an option then?”

“Abuse, adultery, drug use, those are all acceptable reasons for divorce if people cannot change. Not someone wanting out because they fell out of love with their spouse. There is marital counseling for that, which is what you should be seeking right now instead of living in sin in Dogwood Beach.”

My mouth fell open with a gasp.

“Now …” My mother cleared her throat, not even missing a beat. “If you would like me to set you and Marcus up for an appointment with Father Frank, I would be more than happy—”

I disconnected the call.

My throat burned like I had been breathing fire. Tears threatened to pour down my face, but my head was the holder of the worst of my pain.

A thousand tiny needles stung my scalp, and the base of my skull throbbed so violently, my vision blurred.

Footsteps lifted my eyes as I dug the points of my fingers into my temples.

Tori appeared in the doorway with a green Christmas quilt draped over her shoulders and head.

She always wrapped up in blankets like a cocooned caterpillar when she watched television.

“You okay, hon?”

I shifted my eyes to the phone next to my knee.

“My mom,” I explained.

“Again?”

Behind heavy lids, I nodded. I couldn’t look at her as I clung to my lie from earlier.

It sucked.

“You wanna talk about it?”

I shook my head and stared at my eggplant-colored toenails.

“All right, well, I’m LaLa’d out for tonight. You change your mind, come get me. Otherwise I’ll see you in the morning, Hookah.”

I gave her a weak smile and my hazel irises, nodding when she asked in silent question with a hand on the light switch if I wanted the room dark, then I fisted my phone and slid under a heavy teal comforter and champagne satin sheets, pressing my head between two pillows and praying for reprieve.

My mouth tasted like sweet sparkling wine and mango salsa. A combination I needed to kill with Crest and mouthwash, but the throbbing in my skull kept me horizontal.

I don’t know how long I lay there before my phone rang, but it was long enough that my lips were cracked from sleep-riddled breaths bursting free.

I pulled my head out from under the pillow and flipped to my back.

The screen lit up above me. I wet my lips eagerly and answered with slumber lingering in my voice.

“Trouble. You okay?”

I heard his breathy laugh. It sounded cozy and familiar.

I wanted to watch his chest move with it, his throat and his mouth.

I wanted to see if he dipped his head or threw it back.

“Why are you asking if I’m okay?”

“’Cause you said your day went to shit,” I pointed out, pulling the covers closer. “Why did it go to shit?”

He breathed slowly, then replied, “You don’t need to worry about that, babe. It’s better now.”

I smiled against cool satin, but it didn’t linger when I thought about Brian’s reasoning from a day ago.

“Is this the bad in your life, Brian?”

“Yeah,” he answered without pause, like a relieving breath.

“Is it stuff you can’t share with me?”

“Yeah.”

Again, no pause.

I rolled toward the ocean-view window and sighed, not in disappointment.

In content.

I wanted this Later.

And he was giving it to me, even after his day went to shit.

“Then we’ll just talk about stuff you can share with me,” I said after tucking the blanket over my shoulder and getting cozy.

He laughed again, light against my ear.

“Like what, Wild? What do you want to know?”

I closed my eyes.

Everything, I thought, but I started simple.

Chapter Seven

BRIAN

“I haven’t had peanut butter in seven years.”

I dropped my pen in the crease of the book of crosswords I was working on and closed it.

“Say what?” I asked into the phone, then kicked the chair out next to me and stretched out, foot propped up and body angled back.

Sydney and I were shooting the shit, had been since I called her up after getting home at the end of a long as fuck day working at Wax. I was listening to everything she was saying while reading and filling in answers, set on finishing out the page, but not having peanut butter in seven years had me putting my pen down and giving up on Puzzle 17.

“Crazy, right?” Wild asked, sounding like she couldn’t believe it herself. “It’s because of Marcus. He’s allergic.”

“To peanut butter?”

“To peanuts,” she corrected. “And I mean really allergic. He can’t even smell anything with peanuts in it or he’ll start breathing different. It’s serious. He’s had to go to the hospital twice because of a reaction.”

“Shit,” I muttered, not really giving two fucks if this guy had to go to the hospital or not. I was more reacting to what I knew Syd was getting at.

“I love peanut butter,” she whispered longingly. “I love it enough to eat it straight out of the jar, but I couldn’t keep any in the house. I couldn’t even eat it when I wasn’t home because I’d come back smelling like it. It lingers.”

She was right. Even after brushing your teeth, you could sometimes still taste it.

“So not only did I give up peanut butter,” she continued. “But I gave up peanut butter cup sundaes at Friendly’s, and I loved that sundae. Whenever we got good report cards, my mom would take Barrett and me and I’d always order that sundae. It was tradition.”

Christ, I hated this fucker.

He couldn’t help having an allergy but it still pissed me the fuck off.

Her mom took her and Barrett there. That meant a lot to her.