Love on the Brain by Ali Hazelwood

            “Deep breaths,” he orders. “In and out. Don’t think about it, okay? Just breathe. Steady.” His voice is just in-charge enough. The perfect amount of commanding. When I’m like this, a hairbreadth from exploding, I need structure. External frontal lobes. I need someone to think for me until I’ve calmed down. I don’t know what’s more upsetting: that Levi is doing this for me, or that I’m not even surprised about it.

            “Thank you,” I say when I’m more in control. I turn to my side, and my right cheek brushes against the pillow. “This was . . . Thank you.”

            He scans my face, unconvinced. “Are you feeling better?”

            “A little. Thank you for not freaking out.”

            He shakes his head, holding my eyes, and I take more deep breaths. Seems like a good idea. “Want to talk about it?”

            “Not really.”

            He nods and does what he did weeks ago, after saving me from the almost-pancaking: he puts his warm hand on my brow and pushes my hair back. It might be the best thing I’ve felt in months. Years. “Is there anything I can do?”

            “No.”

            He nods again and makes to stand. The dread in the pit of my stomach is back with a vengeance. “Can you—” I realize that I slid my finger through one of the belt loops in his jeans and immediately flush and let go. Still, all the embarrassment in the world isn’t enough to keep me from continuing. “Can you stay? Please? I know you’d probably rather be—”

            “Nowhere else,” he says, without skipping a beat. “There’s nowhere else I’d rather be.” We stay like that, in the Hostile Companionable Silence™ that’s as much a part of our relationship as BLINK, and peanut-butter energy balls, and arguing about Félicette’s existence. After a minute, or maybe thirty, he asks, “What happened, Bee?” and if he sounded pushy, or accusing, or embarrassed, it would be so easy to shut him down. But there’s only pure, naked concern in his eyes, and I don’t just want to tell him. I need to.

            “Annie and I had a falling out in our last year of grad school. We haven’t talked since.”

            He closes his eyes. “I’m a fucking asshole.”

            “No.” I close my fingers around his wrist. “Levi, you—”

            “I fucking pointed her out to you—”

            “You couldn’t have known.” I sniffle. “I mean, you are an asshole, but for other reasons.” I smile. I must look ridiculous, my cheeks glistening with sweat and tears and smudged mascara. He doesn’t seem to mind, at least judging from the way he cups my face, his thumb warm on my skin. It’s a lot of touching for two nemeses, but I’ll allow it. I might even welcome it.

            “Annie’s at Vanderbilt,” he says with the tone of someone who’s talking to himself. “With Schreiber.”

            “You do remember her, then.”

            “Seeing you like this definitely jostled my memory. Other things, too.” He doesn’t move his hand, which is totally fine by me. “Is that why you’re not working with Schreiber? Why you’re with that idiot, Trevor Slate?”

            “Trevor is not an idiot,” I correct him. “He’s a sexist, imbecile dickhead. But, yeah. We were supposed to do our postdocs together. We even timed our graduations so we’d move to Nashville at the same time. And then . . .” I shrug as best as I can. “Then that mess happened, and I couldn’t go anymore. I couldn’t be with her and Tim.”

            He frowns. “Tim?”

            “All three of us were supposed to work with Schreiber.”

            “But what does Tim have to do with this?”

            This is the hard bit. The part I’ve only said out loud twice. Once to Reike, and later to my therapist. I tell myself to breathe. Deeply. In and out. “It was over Tim, the falling out Annie and I had.”

            Levi tenses. His hand moves lower, to cup the back of my neck. Somehow it’s exactly what I need. “Bee.”

            “I think you know how Tim was. Because everyone knew how Tim was.” I smile. The tears are flowing again, quietly unstoppable. “Well, except for me. I just . . . I met him in my freshman year of college, you know? And he liked me. And that winter I had nowhere to go, and he asked if I wanted to spend it with his family. Which, of course, I did. It was amazing. God, I miss his family. His mother would knit me socks—isn’t it the loveliest thing, knitting something warm for someone? I still wear them when it’s cold.” I wipe my cheeks with my wrists. “My therapist said that I didn’t want to see. To admit how Tim truly was, because I overinvested in our relationship. Because if I acknowledged that he was a jerk, then I’d have to give up on the rest of his family, too. Maybe she’s right, but I think I just wanted to trust him, you know? We were together for years. He asked me to marry him. He invited me into his life when no one else ever had. You trust a person like that, don’t you?”