I paused. Only for a second, but I felt guilty over it.

“No, come in,” I offered, stepping back.

“No, I couldn’t do that,” she exclaimed. “This is, like, bad enough. I feel like such a fucking bitch, and I can’t believe I woke you up. I promise, my ride is like…” she squinted at the screen on her phone, “twenty minutes away. I’m good waiting.” She smiled tightly, but I could see the goose bumps on her exposed skin, which there were a lot of. It was cold and dark, and she was not to blame for all of this.

“Please come in,” I asked. We were far enough out for the Uber to take a while, and the amount of available ride shares were slim at this time of night. “I’ll make you some coffee.”

She looked uncertain. “You’re not gonna, like, kill me for trying to get with your man, are you?” she half joked. “Because I swear, I never would have come if I knew you were here. I wouldn’t do that.”

“I’m not going to kill you, Scout’s Honor,” I replied with a weak smile. “And I don’t blame you whatsoever, I promise.”

She hesitated for a moment longer before coming inside.

And that was how I ended up making coffee for the woman my boyfriend had been sleeping with in the middle of the night.

ROWAN

“I failed them, man,” Kip muttered as I opened his front door.

He had a beer bottle dangling from his fingertips. One he definitely didn’t need, considering the amount of booze he’d consumed tonight.

Not enough to drown it out, though.

“This is not your fault,” I told my best friend, not for the first time and not for the last time.

It was like a sock in the gut, seeing him like this.

Defeated. Full of blame. Self-hatred.

“It is my fault,” he argued, taking one last pull of the beer before hurling it across his yard where it smashed across the concrete.

“I’m the one who came home,” he told me. “I’m the one who lived when I fucking shouldn’t have.”

He didn’t sound drunk. Even though I knew he was. He sounded stone cold sober. And serious.

Which scared the fucking shit out of me.

This was Kip. The real Kip. The one the smiles and the womanizing hid. The one falling apart at the fucking seams.

I grabbed his shoulders and shook him. “Don’t you fuckin’ talk like that,” I hissed. “You’re allowed to grieve them. Fuck, you wanna drown your sorrows, do it. But you do anything to follow them, that gets you an inch closer than you are right now, you’re dishonoring their memory. You may as well go and spit on their graves.”

“You be careful how you fucking talk to me, man.” Kip’s eyes were wild and cold, dangerous.

I didn’t back down. Even though I knew my friend was close to trying to beat the shit out of me.