If you're the type to read and review ebooks, Miss Matched is available on NetGalley and Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review. It releases with Wattpad Books on June 13th, 2023. 

In the middle of the night, I wake with a start, heart pounding and Gwen is curled into my side, her hand on my chest. I search the darkness for a beat, orienting myself and trying to calm the stampede in my chest.

"You have a lot of nightmares," Gwen murmurs, her lips brushing against my skin. "What are they about?"

"None of them are exactly the same." My voice is gravely from lack of use.

"Is it ever about this?" Her thumb brushes the scar above my eye.

Early on she asked me questions about the deep gash, and I avoided them all, and then she stopped asking. This moment is an opening to be honest with her, and I really consider for a beat how to respond.

"No," I say.

If I crack that memory, I worry about what else might seep out, coat my life like an oil slick. Some things are best left sealed tight. Diana. What happened. I spoke about it in mandated therapy—enough to get me cleared to return to work—but no one outside that closed door has heard a word about those events from me. Even letting my mind touch it now feels dangerous. As soon as the nightmares abate again, I can go back to pretending the past is far behind me.

It is behind me. All of the drama and heartbreak is. There's no need to swim in those seas to know how rough the water is. I can see it from the shore where I'm safe.

"Are the nightmares because we're getting closer to seeing your family? Or something else? You said it wasn't me being in the bed, but if it is..."

"It's not you," I say, squeezing her closer. "It's not you."

Or at least it's not her problem. My subconscious is in overdrive at the thought of anything happening to Gwen, ever. Somehow, something deep in me has linked Diana and Gwen together. Maybe it's simply that they're the only women I've ever loved like this, and maybe it's something more than that, but I refuse to dwell on it. Eventually, the nightmares will subside again. They always do.

"I understand why you don't see your parents, what with the drinking, and everything. But why don't you see your brothers?"

"They're a package deal."

"What does that mean?"

"Do you remember when I told you that to survive my family you were either a brawler or an appeaser?"

"Yeah," she says. "You said you became a brawler, so you left. I never asked what the tipping point was, but there must have been one."

"As a kid, I used to think my parents were decent people if they weren't drinking. There'd be stretches where they were both sober, and things would be okay in the house. But then my last year of high school, after I'd already been accepted to UBC, shit just unraveled. My dad lost his remote mining job. It was supposed to be a dry camp, and he got caught with alcohol."

Gwen cuddles closer, as though she can already sense what's coming.

"When he got home, he seemed hell bent on turning me and my brothers into his drinking buddies. No limits. My brothers, Jamie and Sam, were fourteen and sixteen at the time, and I was the buzz kill for not only saying no, but for trying to convince them to say no too. I didn't know where Dad was getting the money from. But I figured it out when I went to pay my tuition."

"They stole from you?"

"Felt like it at the time. They said they had the right to take it, and maybe they did for some of it. Their alcohol fund was my education fund. We'd all been contributing for years, and I should have known it was too good to be true. My parents never did anything without a secondary motive that benefited them. But they'd left the account for years. Money trickling in. Once I was accepted and Dad lost his job, the dam broke in the wrong direction."

"How'd you pay for school?"

"A lot of panicking and scrambling and loans. It wasn't pretty. But my second year at UBC I was nominated for a special scholarship through a wealthy donor family." Diana's family before we were even together.

"Your parents' betrayal made you leave?"

I let out a bitter laugh. "You'd think so, but no. It was devastating at the time, but it was always the same shit with my parents. Give with one hand and take away with the other."

She presses her lips against my chest, and I run my fingers along her arm, wondering whether I even dare tell her the next part. Doesn't even feel like it was me that did it. But it was. It was, and the only thing I regret is that my siblings ended up staying in that house.

"So what was it?"

When I hesitate, she presses closer, her presence a reassurance, even in the dark.

"The day I found out about the money, I came home to find my youngest brother, Sam, passed out on the kitchen floor. When I checked his pulse, it was weak. There was vomit beside him." The memory is carved into my brain. Back then I understood he was in trouble, but now I understand he likely would have died. 

"We only had a landline—one phone in the whole house. When I ran to the living room to call for an ambulance, my father was there. He was drunk and pushed me away, prevented me from calling. Said Sam would sleep it off and be just fine, but I knew better. The rest is a bit of a blur. I know I hit him first, and we got into it. He was still stronger than me, and out of desperation, I grabbed his shotgun from the kitchen and threatened him." I swallow down the wisp of guilt that tries to attach itself. "And I think he realized I would have shot him, and he let me call."

"That must have been really hard."

"It was all hard. Looking back, there was no easy or safe in that house. But that still isn't why I rarely go home."

She doesn't push me to say more, but she holds me tight, as if she can refill my well of peace and contentment with her own. This is the part I've rarely told people. My parents stealing from me was normalized. My parents drinking was normalized. As kids, we stuck together in the house, looked out for one another in ways our parents didn't.

"Sam went to the hospital, and we'd done it before—lied for our parents. Our parents had always told us that kids in care had it worse than us. That fear of the unknown was enough to keep us in line. Now I was eighteen, though, and I told Sam, Jamie, and Ang that I'd take care of them. I'd abandon UBC and go to court. Together, we could do it. We just had to tell the truth."

"Oh, Blake," Gwen whispers.

"I told it, and they didn't. They painted me as the liar."

"You couldn't save them, so now you save everybody else," she says.

"Am I that much of a cliché?" I ask with a small chuckle.

"You were hurting, and you turned that hurt into something useful, something you were passionate about. It's probably the most honorable thing I've ever heard."

Silence slips over the room, and I'm not sure how to take the compliment. Nothing about what happened in that house feels honorable.

"I've only told that story a couple times in my life," I say, turning so we're facing each other. "You'd think it would get easier."

"Would you?" Gwen asks, her tone reflective. "For someone like me, I think telling the story would make it easier. The repetition and minimizing it would make the reality less painful. Emotional fast food."

She constantly minimizes her emotions, and I'm not sure why. Does she really believe her feelings are that shallow, or is she trying to protect herself too? Or is she equating openness with shallowness? It's certainly not what I've seen in her.

"You're like an emotional work of art."

I laugh. "Only you would use that analogy. Like a fucked up surrealist painting? Am I your Salvadore Dali?"

"Your brain," she says, "is a medical wonder. How do you remember those things?"

"You've dragged me to several art museums, and you love it..."

The rising sun colors the horizon through the windows, and in the half-light we stare at each other, and I wonder if she's thinking what I am. For me, the world is a completely different place than it was six months ago, and I'm not sure any moment will ever feel as perfect as the ones I've had with her. To know she's out in the world somewhere, and I'm not with her, will be a specific kind of torture.

"Not a fucked up surrealist painting," she whispers. "A paper mâché masterpiece with layer upon layer of soft feeling hardened into something durable and protective." She staddles me, and her hair forms a curtain around us. "But the best part? The delicious candy you conceal."

"Just takes a little perseverance to get to it," I say, tucking a few strands of her hair behind her ear.

"Or a lot." She grins at me. "Maybe a lot of perseverance."

"Did you think you had it in you?"

"I'm exceptionally good at being annoying."

"I never found you annoying. Overwhelming. Never annoying."

She searches my face and then she leans down and kisses me. "You're lying, but I'll let you away with it."

"What else will you let me away with?" I murmur against her lips.

"Anything you want," she says, and she grinds against me, rotating her hips. "What do you want?"

"You," I say as I thread my fingers through the back of her hair, drawing her down. "Just you."

Next free update: Friday

Reads: 46, 671 Unique readers: 319 Engaged readers: 991