I left at 5 AM like a coward.
No note. No kiss on his forehead. No romantic morning-after moment where I make coffee in his shirt and we smile at each other across the kitchen like people who haven't just detonated their entire lives.
I simply peeled myself out from under his arm one inch at a time – holding my breath when he stirred, freezing when he mumbled something into the pillow that sounded dangerously close to my name – and grabbed my shoes from the hallway floor and my bag from the kitchen table and slipped out the door like I was fleeing a crime scene.
Which, technically, I was. The crime was sleeping with my future stepbrother in his bed, sober, on purpose, and liking it so much that I'd stayed the night instead of doing the smart thing and leaving while I still had plausible
