Then she spun on her heel and left him on the floor, making her way back to the kitchen. She put away the gun and put on the kettle to make some tea. He followed not long after, walking funny as he entered the room and pulled out a kitchen chair, sitting gingerly.
She didn’t want to feel sympathy toward him. She didn’t want to, but damned if there wasn’t a trickle of guilt running up her spine. Emma opened the freezer and grabbed an ice pack. “Here.”
He caught her rather wild toss easily, looking down in confusion for the briefest second before his expression stiffened. “Way to rub it in. While I’m glad to know you can defend yourself, I can’t believe you got the drop on me like that. Taekwondo?”
“Jazzercise.”
Emma deliberately turned her back, partly so he could place the ice pack in a strategic location without being watched, and partly to hide her amusement. She wasn’t about to discuss her martial arts training with him. Damn it, she needed to put up some walls. She didn’t want compliments. Especially not from this man.
And she didn’t want to hear his explanation, either. At this point, any excuses he could offer would be more about easing his conscience then ridding her of any past pain.
Yet…if listening to whatever bullshit reason he had for his actions meant they could finally end this forever, maybe she should hear him out. They could get it over with, then she would escort him to the door, close it firmly behind his very fine ass, and never see him again.
They could both get on with their lives.
“Tea?” she asked grudgingly.
“No, thanks.”
She went on stirring her own cup, placing the spoon to the side and making her way to the living room. If she had to listen to this, she may as well be comfortable.
He stared after her, twisting slightly where he sat until he faced her. Although she’d slipped into a pair of leggings before he’d broken in, she’d left her oversized shirt on, and the neckline was so wide it kept falling over one shoulder. Dean’s gaze lingered on her bare skin for a moment before rising to meet her eyes.
“You’re not going to make this easy, are you?”
He spoke quietly, and her back stiffened. “I don’t know. What do you consider easy? Answering questions and dealing with snide comments for six months about why your boyfriend vanished? Canceling out of an apartment and losing the damage deposit because the person you were supposed to move in with is no longer in the picture? Are those things easy when you’re eighteen and in love and abandoned?”
Dean’s lips were a tight line, but it wasn’t anger on his face—it was shame. “I’m sorry. I really, truly am, Em. And for what it’s worth, it was a mistake not talking to you before I left. I’ve lived with that regret all these years.”
She thought about the women Suz described as floating in and out of Dean’s life like sexual confetti, and wondered at his definition of regret. “It was a long time ago, and it doesn’t change anything in the here and now. You left, period. I had to deal with it, and I did.”
“It was still wrong of me, and I know it’s no excuse except I was nineteen and at the moment I didn’t see any other solution.”
Emma stared down at her hands, surprised to find that they were steady. That even though she was cold inside, she really didn’t feel any anger right now. Just a dull ache inside and an enormous sense of sadness at what could have been.
“Dean, we had everything planned. We were moving in together. We were going to build a life together.” A soft laugh escaped, and if the sound was slightly bitter, she couldn’t help it. She lifted her head to look him in the eye. “I turned down a scholarship to Milan because we were going to take on the world. And instead, I found out from someone at the grocery store that you were gone. That you had boarded a bus headed to San Antonio. And then you never came back…”
The sadness in his eyes was real. “I couldn’t stay.”
“And you couldn’t call? Couldn’t write?” she demanded. “You couldn’t do any of those things that would have let me know it was nothing I had done to chase you away? The closest I got to finding out what happened to you was one of your brothers going out of his way to get in digs about how even you couldn’t stand to be with someone like me. That you’d rather get shot than end up stuck with a scrawny bitch—”
“I nearly killed him.” Dean’s tone was ice cold as he interrupted. “I went from…a bad meeting…to home, and my dad laid into me. Going on about how I was useless and a fuck-up, and how he’d teach me to show some respect, and instead of standing there and taking it, I swung back.”