Her breath hitched a little. She did her best to offer a reassuring smile. “Don’t. I’m fine.”
It was a blatant lie. She was anything but fine. She was barely hanging on by a thread, and every minute she sat here with him it grew increasingly difficult to pretend otherwise. Her hands moved, now held tightly across her midsection in a protective shield. If that’s all he had come for, then there was no reason to continue.
“Well, it was nice to see you again,” she said, beginning to rise.
“Please, Rebecca, don’t go just yet. There’s something I need to say.”
*
She bit her lip, but resumed her place on the swing. Kane felt as though he had won a small victory; she obviously didn’t want to be here. His chest ached. Rebecca had never denied him anything; he hadn’t realized that until now.
Kane’s eyes trailed back and forth over her. Every detail of her was committed to his memory, and now he noted with growing horror the changes. The lack of sparkle in her eyes. The paleness of her skin and the dark circles. The slow, careful way she moved. The way her clothes hung on her thinner frame. The way her hands clutched each other in her lap and she angled herself away from him instead of trying to quietly sneak a touch, thinking he didn’t know exactly what she was doing.
He wanted to roar at the wrongness of it all. Of her impersonal, polite tone. Of the way she avoided his eyes. Of the way she pressed against the far end of the swing, staying as far away from him as physically possible in the limited space of her small porch. She should be speaking to him in that soft, slightly breathy voice she had. Looking up at him with those impossibly large doe eyes, filled with what he now knew had been love. Touching him again. God, how he missed those small, incidental touches that she had once needed so badly.
“I owe you an apology,” he said, forcing his voice to sound somewhat normal. Like he wasn’t dying inside.
She shrank farther away from him, if that was even possible, as if his words hurt her all that much more. Looking down at her lap, she actually smiled a little; the kind of sad smile someone has when they just realized they’d been had all over again. Only then did it begin to dawn on him what she had been hoping to hear - that he had made a horrible mistake. That he wanted her back. That he needed her. That he loved her. Any of those would have been a better choice. Once again, he felt blindsided by the obvious.
“An apology? For what? Being honest with me before I made an even bigger fool of myself?” Some of the apathy was gone from her voice now; in its place were echoes of the raw pain she’d been hiding inside.
“I never thought you were a fool,” Kane said. “I was only trying to protect you.”
Disbelief washed over her features, a little color rose in her cheeks, vivid against her too-pale skin. “Protect me? Tell me Kane, what could you possibly have been protecting me from?”
“Me. I was trying to protect you from me.”
Rebecca looked at him as if she had never seen him before. Tears began to stream from her eyes, though her lip trembled from the effort of trying to hold them back. Kane was stricken; he had never seen Rebecca cry before – not in the jungle, not at the cabin. Several moments passed before he could think again. He reached out for her but she stood and backed away even farther.
“From you,” she repeated in a whisper of sheer disbelief. “From the one person I thought truly understood. From the only person I have ever felt connected to, here.” She brought her fist to the center of her chest. Her lip trembled harder. “From the only man I have ever offered myself to...”
“Rebecca, please, you have to listen - ”
“No, Kane,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t have to listen. Not to you, not to Aidan, not to anyone but myself. Why does everyone think they know what’s best for me?”
“If you would only let me explain. I want to be -”
He was going to say “honest”, but she stopped him before he could finish. “Oh my God,” she said, the strain in her voice evident. “Please don’t say it. If there is even a shred of decency in you please don’t tell me you want to be friends, because I can’t be friends with you anymore.”
She backed toward the door, the tears flowing freely. “Just go, Kane, please. And don’t come by again.”
She closed the door and left him alone on the porch. Maybe this was what she really wanted. Maybe he was just being selfish. Maybe it really was too late. Maybe he had fucked things up so badly this time there was no way to fix it.
Nothing could have ever made him walk away from Rebecca a second time.
Nothing but a heartfelt plea from her own lips.
He wanted to roar in anguish. To rip the fucking door right off its hinges and stomp inside, throw Rebecca over his shoulder and take her to her bed, then spend the rest of the night showing her exactly what she was to him. His mate. His lover.
His croie. The only woman he would ever love.
Instead, Kane turned away from the door and slowly walked back to his truck.