And Meegan… is toxic. Even back then, had she spotted the loneliness in Spencer? The desperation for someone to care for him? Had she seen it and taken advantage? Of his love and devotion, that he would do anything to make her happy because she was his entire world?
“What happened?” The question slips out, and it’s too late to tell myself not to ask it. To debate the pros and cons, determine the possibility of him leaving in a huff over it.
But I need to ask. In such a short amount of time with him, I’ve learned so much. Yet, I have this sneaking suspicion I’ve only scratched the surface.
“Natalie told me some,” I continue, filling his silence with babbling. I pick up a kitchen towel and start drying the dishes he’s cleaned. “That you broke up freshman year.”
I don’t know if it’s that I don’t look at him, that I give him the space he needs to answer. Or even if it’s just that he’s grown comfortable here, with me. But he pauses with a mug in his hand. Clears his throat. Starts washing the mug with a sponge and begins to talk.
“It started off good. She was hot, I played football, so we ran with the same crowd.”
“A meet-cute for the ages,” I can’t help but mutter.
Spencer’s mouth twitches, and he flicks soap bubbles at me. “Her parents were never home, so more often than not, I stayed with her.” He hands me the clean mug, meeting my gaze and quickly glancing away. “She was my first. I wasn’t hers.”
“Would you believe,” he asks, brow crinkling. “There was a time I sucked at fucking?”
“Yes,” I say, and Spencer looks my way again. “Everyone has to start somewhere, Spencer. You think I woke up one day an expert photographer? Did you know exactly how to throw a football the first time you picked one up? Practice makes perfect.” I bite my lip, debating, then decide the story’s too good not to tell him. “Our first time, I pinched Ashton’s scrotum.”
He barks out a laugh. “How?”
“We turned off the lights. There was so much fumbling, I had no idea what I was touching,” I giggle. “How bad was it for you, with Meegan?”
He groans. “I came in two thrusts.”
I whistle. “You’ve definitely improved since then.”
“Lots of practice.”
I blush and turn away from the intent stare he gives me. And I recall all the practicing we’d done together over the past few weeks.
Spencer finishes the last dish, taking my drying towel when the blanket around me starts to slip. I fix it, asking, “So your first time wasn’t good. What happened then?”
“Meegan said it was fine,” Spencer says. “We worked at it. A lot. I wanted to get better. For her. So when I did, it felt like all this…” He gestures to his shoulders. “This pressure was off me. Like I was doing right by my girl. Making her feel good.”
I hold an arm over my stomach to quell a white hot spike striking through my gut at the way he says ‘my girl’. It’s a cramp. Just a cramp.
“And freshman year…”
“Freshman year…” He puts our clean mugs back in the cabinet. Leans against the counter, hands gripping the edge. Drums his fingertips on the counter edge. “Our relationship had always been… hot-tempered. But that year, it got worse. I met Morris and Hart through football, Mason and Rowe through them. I wanted to spend time with my friends, but Meegan wanted me to be with her.”
I nod, these things I’d gleaned from Natalie’s recount.
“We were always fighting. Nothing I did or said could calm her down when she got on a rant. She’d get mad and yell at me, then ignore me for days. When she came back, we’d fuck and then yell some more.” He shuts his eyes, pinches both temples in one hand, like just the memory of it gives him a headache.
Did it remind him, I wonder, of his parents? Because his childhood, there must have been fights. Tension. Harsh words and crying and anger—and no wonder there’s so much feeling locked inside him. Had he put up with such a volatile relationship for so long because that’s all he had ever known of people supposedly in love?
It takes three tries for me to speak. “Natalie said she cheated on you. In your dorm.”
He waits. And it takes twice as long as it took me, for him to say the next words. “We had another fight. Over some stupid thing, I don’t even remember. I went to a party with Morris. Found her when I got back. With my roommate. At first, I had no fucking idea what I was seeing. I thought—” He clears his throat when his voice cracks. “I thought he was hurting her.”
I don’t care that I’m sick. That up until a few days ago, he hadn’t trusted me. I cross the kitchen and wrap my blanket around him. Smother him in a cocoon of comfort. Hold his face in my hands and stand on my tiptoes until our foreheads press together. Spencer gathers me in his arms, his heart racing under his chest when he pulls me tightly to him.
I can’t begin to imagine what that had been like for him. The emotional toll it had taken to see someone he cared for and think he hadn’t been able to help her in time. Only to discover she’d done it on purpose. Intentionally. To hurt him.
His head ducked over mine, his voice is muffled in my hair. “I wanted to
