Living with your ex is a task not fit for the faint of heart.

It’s for those who enjoy daily pain and torture, those who aren’t afraid to see the love of their life smile and go on without them, who are prepared to watch them flourish…without you. It’s for those who are ready to realize you weren’t needed at all.

I’ve discovered something about myself in the last three months.

My heart? It’s faint, and I’m barely hanging on.

“You’re staring at him again,” my roommate and best friend Carsen murmurs from across the table where we’re eating breakfast. “Neither of you will ever move on if you keep mooning over him, Nate.”

How can you tell your heart to stop loving someone?

“Just mind your own damn business and eat your breakfast,” I tell him.

Carsen glares at me and I ignore it, taking a bite of my breakfast so he’ll quit staring holes into my head.

Once his face is buried in his bowl of cereal, I glance back to the living room where my ex-boyfriend is stashing his books into his bag. He bends over, and I watch the muscles in his back jump.

I remember those muscles—well, I might add. I remember how they’d constrict under my hands, how I’d rake my nails across them. I remember everything about them, the dips and curves, how they taste.

I remember—

I’m not his anymore.

The thought slams into me like a speeding car, and it hurts just as badly.

I’m not his anymore. That ended when I screwed everything up with a drunken New Year’s kiss—you know, with someone who wasn’t my boyfriend, with someone who meant nothing to me.

Huh, funny how that works: we take things that mean everything with people who mean everything and destroy them with things that mean nothing and people who mean even less.

A foot nails my shin under the table, but I manage to hold in my yelp.

“That hurt, you ass.”

“Stop staring, you idiot.”

“I can’t just stop, Carsen. It doesn’t work that way.”

His brow rises. “You did this.”

“I hate you.”

“Liar.” He grabs his now empty bowl and heads to the sink. “I’m leaving. You want a ride, Blake?” he calls out over his shoulder.

Blake’s electric green eyes catch mine, and I swear I can see an ache in them—the same ache that resides in mine. He misses me too. He has to. There’s no way, after everything we’ve been through together, he doesn’t. I just don’t understand why he’s letting a mistaken moment in time define our futures.

I also don’t know why he’s placing all the blame on me. Technically, he’d broken up with me that morning during an intense argument. I was a free man…of sorts.

Blake rips his gaze away and focuses on Carsen in a flash. “Yeah. Thanks, man.”

He doesn’t look my way again. I watch him as he heads outside, slips into Carsen’s sedan…watch as he rests his head against the window and mumbles something to himself.

I pull my eyes from the scene in front of me before I lose it—again.

I grab my half-eaten bowl of cereal and spin toward the sink. Carsen’s leaning against it with hard eyes dead set on me.

In this moment, he looks like the brooding Carsen from before, the one who was a tangle of anger after his mother died, the one who would have gone off on anyone at any time, the one who did. The steel eyes staring at me right now reflect that man of months ago.

I don’t need his anger or his judgments. Doesn’t he know this pain I live in every day is enough?

“What?” I bite out.

“Nate, you—”

“No. Don’t Nate me, Carsen. You have no fucking idea what it’s like to have to live in the same house as the man you love and know you can’t touch him. You can’t laugh with him. You can’t smile with him, can’t look in his general direction, and God forbid you want to sit in the same room as him, because that oxygen, that free air you breathe? Forget it. It doesn’t exist anymore. So don’t fucking Nate me. You don’t get it.”

His eyes cast downward, and his brows draw close together. “Need I remind you—”

“That it’s all my fault? That I’m the one who burned that bridge? Yeah, I got that loud and clear. I get that loud and clear—every damn day, dude. I get it.”

He lifts his head and nods. “Okay. Just remember, he’s hurting too.”

I drop my bowl heavily into the sink. “That’s what sucks so bad. I can’t take that pain from him. Instead, I’m a constant reminder of it.”

Carsen doesn’t say anything. I wouldn’t let him anyway.

I grab my own bag from the chair in the living room and head toward the front door. “You coming?” I ask him.

He nods. “Yeah. I’ll be right there.”

Then he heads upstairs, and I amble outside.

I stop dead in my tracks, realizing I’m about to climb inside a car with Blake and there’s no one here to run interference. We need a referee.

Sucking in a breath, I get it over with and pop the handle on the back door. I slide inside on the opposite side of the car and buckle myself in. The click of the seatbelt is deafening. He doesn’t turn around, doesn’t say anything. He just stares out the passenger window while I watch him.

His strong jaw is lined with stubble. It’s a new look for him, and fuck me if I don’t want to reach over and lick it, want to graze my fingers over it, run my hands over it. I want to feel it against my face, against my throat, against my chest. I want to feel it everywhere.

I know he knows I’m watching him; I can see it in the way his chest is rising and falling in rapid succession. I know it’s affecting him by the deep breaths he takes, by the way his hands grip his thighs like they’re a life vest of their own.

“I—”

He flinches. Before I can say anything more, the driver side door is flung open and Carsen folds himself into the front seat.

“You boys ready?”

“Yep,” comes my clipped reply.

Carsen meets my deadly stare in the rearview mirror.

I flip him off. He chuckles.

Another sign of the change in him. If this were the Carsen of eight months ago, he’d have twisted around in the car so quick and thrown a punch or two. He was full of rage. Then Elliott Mathers happened, or the stars did—whatever, it’s their story. Now he’s full of love and happiness and smiles and small touches.

Lucky bastard.

Blake and I weren’t always together. But, to be fair, we weren’t always not together either.

Everything began innocently. We were friends, nothing more. After meeting in middle school, we did everything together: movies, dates, football, college—all of it. Carsen’s been right there with us every step of the way, and we’ve been the inseparable trio since I can remember.

But two years ago, everything changed.

Carsen lost his mom, and it put life into perspective for us. It’s short, it’s unforgiving, and it can be taken away at any moment.

That’s when it happened.

I noticed his stares. He noticed mine.

I noticed the way my body would react when he entered the room, the way my heart would race with jealousy when someone else flirted with him, the way my cock would jump when he laughed or smiled. I noticed the way my stomach would grow heavy whenever he was away.

I noticed it all. He did too.

But still, we were friends and nothing more.

Until we weren’t, and everything changed.

Then it changed again on New Year’s, because I went and fucked it all up for good.

I wait outside for Carsen to get out of his last class so I can hitch a ride back to Wakefield. He’s ten minutes late—and by “late”, I mean he’s off making out with his lovely new girlfriend, Elliott, who is just a ray of sunshine and hope. She’s the kind of good you don’t let go. I envy Carsen.

A chill runs down my spine, and I know Blake’s arrived.

“He late again?” I nod, and he chuckles. He kicks at an invisible rock and stuffs his hands in his pockets. I don’t need to be looking at him to know all this. I know him; that’s enough. “They’re too cute to be mad at though. If two people belong together, it’s them.”

It’s us, too.

He doesn’t say anything else, and neither do I. We stand there in the hot afternoon sun and wait.

He waits for a ride. I wait for the courage to talk to him.

Finally, after what feels like an eternity, Carsen shows up with Elliott in tow.

“Boys,” she greets with that flawless smile of hers.

Carsen grins and pulls her closer, planting a kiss on her forehead.

“I call shotgun!” Elliott yells as she takes off running once we’re in range of the car. She giggles loudly as she latches onto the handle. Carsen just shakes his head and unlocks the door so she can dive in and secure her spot.

Blake sighs from behind me, and I don’t miss the discontent in it.

He’s not happy about having to sit beside me in the back. He hates me.

But that’s okay—I hate me too.

He slides into the back seat wordlessly and I stick my hand out to Carsen. “Can I drive?”

“No.”

“Dude, come on. Don’t do this.”

“I’m not doing this. Take it up with Elliott.”

“I hate her.”

“You’re so full of lies today.”

I groan and take my place beside my ex in the back.

Elliott and Carsen babble away up front about the meteor shower they’re wanting to watch tonight. They make cutesy plans with their cutesy smiles and their cutesy stupid relationship shit.

While they’re busy yammering, I lean Blake’s way and whisper, “Sorry you have to ride back here with me.”

He shifts even closer to the door than he already was, and my heart constricts in now familiar pain.

The two up front continue talking, not noticing the tension in the back. To be fair, it’s almost a near constant now.

But did they not see Blake just reach over and crush me? Did they not see him take my already bleeding heart into his hands and squash it until it stopped beating? How could they have missed it?

I didn’t.

When we finally arrive back at the house, I’m the first to exit the vehicle, scared if I spend another moment in the car, I’ll die. I can already feel my breath being stolen from my chest.

I race inside and up the stairs to my new bedroom—my cold, lonely bedroom.

I toss myself facedown onto my bed and throw a pillow over my head, hoping to silence the happy laughter floating up through the air vents.

Exhaustion covers me like a blanket, and my eyes begin to drift closed. I’m tired all the time now—tired of the fake smiles, tired of the forced laughter, and tired of pretending I’m not rotting away inside.

The pretenses are wearing me out. I can’t continue to act like this isn’t killing me, like I don’t love him.

I love him. He hates me.

I hate me too.