She fucks up when she says it.

Laura knows it’s a fuck up, knows she shouldn’t say it. But it’s like she physically can’t stop the words from bursting between her lips, a sickeningly sweet vomit.

“I love you.”

It mostly sounds like an exhale, little more than a whisper. A gasp. She clamps her lips together and hopes, prays that he doesn’t understand the words.

Of course he understands. She doesn’t have that kind of luck.

She feels Travis stiffen under her fingers. This — what they have, their arrangement — only works if they both ignore it. If they pretend that it doesn’t mean anything, that it’s so insignificant that it practically doesn’t exist—

And she’s tried. Tried to keep it that way, to create something that feels safe enough that he won’t run away. Won’t go on another tirade about how wrong the two of them together are. Won’t spook. She can deal with her feelings. If it’s always just been about the sex for him — she can deal with that. It’s good enough for her. She can make it work.

Except that she just ruined it.

And right before a fucking orgasm—

The room is silent and dark. Underneath her, Travis is still as a statue. She can feel the chord of tension running through his entire body, a different tension than before when they were about to fuck. A worse tension.

The silence stretches on forever. She keeps her hands on him, afraid that this will be the last time she’s able to.

“Laura—”

“I didn’t mean it,” she says before he has a chance to say anything else. Anything that would make her cry later. “It’s just—talk. Sweet talk. I didn’t mean it.”

And there’s a part of her that’s angry, so furious that she has to do this. That she can’t just — that he won’t just let her love him. That he’s so fucking stupid.

But she just presses her hands a little harder against his skin. A reassurance.

“Don’t ruin it,” she whispers to him, but speaks to herself. “Come on, keep fucking me.”