My heart cracks and spills aching, sour regret. I despise myself so much. “Never, Kate. I swear.”
“You do,” she says, her mouth pulling in a frown, the tiniest sparkle at the inside corners of her eyes.
The crack in my heart becomes a clean break. Tears. They’re tears.
“I never . . .” I swallow roughly. “I never wanted you to think I hated you, Kate, I . . .” My voice dies off. Another snore lifts her ribs. She’s asleep.
And, like a coward, I tell her what I don’t have the courage to say while she’s awake.
“All I’ve ever wanted is for you to hate me. I couldn’t hate you if I wanted to. I wish I could, but I can’t.” My thumb slides along the smooth, warm skin of her hand. “I don’t know how to do this, so all I’ve ever tried is not to—not to see you or touch you or think about you, because I can’t . . .”
She exhales shakily, curling in on her side, as if protecting herself, shielding herself from me. Those pleas to make peace that have been thrown my way by our friends and family are pebbles to the landslide of her tears, her hand clutching mine, her truth that’s slipped between the cracks of her awareness.
She thinks I hate her.
It’s the last thing I ever wanted. I have never loathed myself so much.
“I’ll fix it,” I tell her, gently tucking behind her ear a hair that’s caught in the tears wetting her cheek. “I promise, Kate, I’ll fix it.”
I know she’s asleep, but her silence feels damning, skeptical, a warning that nothing but a long, hard struggle lies ahead.
I meant what I said, when I told her that I don’t know how to do this, how to share a world with Kate without disdain safely wedged between us, without distance maintained by living an ocean apart.
But that’s not enough to stop me, not anymore.
I can’t—I cannot—live in a world where Kate believes, even if she only reveals it in her most unguarded moments, that I hate her. I can’t let tears wet her eyes and that ache of heart-deep pain pinch her expression. I can’t live with myself, knowing I hurt her.
And now I have to fix it.
I know walking that tightrope of healing what I’ve broken without bonding us together won’t be easy. I won’t even try to tell myself otherwise. But I’m goddamn Christopher Petruchio. Nothing stops me. Every part of my life, when I’ve set my mind to something—in my work, in the kitchen, in sparring, in my bed—I haven’t settled until I’ve come as damn close to perfection as is humanly possible.
Forcing each step back toward her doorway, out of her room, I tell myself what I’m about to undertake won’t be any different. It can’t be.
Because if it is, I am in some deep shit.
? ELEVEN ?
Kate
Waking up is offensive. My head pounds. A sharp ache pounds between my thighs, too. Not for the first time since coming home, I’m hungover and horny—my personal hell.
Shuffling from my room to the kitchen, I squint miserably against the sun.
“And here I thought I had it rough,” Bea says.
I jump a foot and spin toward the sound of her voice, tripping on the coffee table, stumbling back and landing on the armchair in a cloud of dust motes. “You scared me.”
Bea clutches the side of her head, eyes shut. “Sorry. Apparently it runs in the family. You scared Jamie and Christopher last night.”
I ease upright on the chair, experiencing a sudden swell of nausea. “What?”
“They couldn’t find you after everyone left. They were scouring the apartment for you.”
Guilt twinges through me like a plucked string. I want to ask Bea what she’s talking about, but I’ve got a bad feeling about how she’s going to answer me. Before I hear whatever drunken nonsense I pulled last night, I need coffee.
Pushing off the chair, I slip into the kitchen, fumble for a mug, drag the carafe off the warming plate, and pour a hot, sloshing cup of desperately needed caffeine.
“Should you be doing that?” Bea asks.
“Drinking coffee?” I ask, poised to savor that glorious, piping-hot first sip. “Fuck, yes.”
“Using your arm,” she says. “Not wearing the sling.”
The coffee I’ve just swallowed flies down my windpipe. I smack my chest.
“You okay?” Bea asks.
I nod, lifting a hand. “Fine,” I croak.
She frowns at me and my lifted arm. The one I’ve been faithfully tucking into a sling for the past two weeks, even though my shoulder’s fully recovered from the run-in with Christopher.
I drop my arm.
“I had it seen yesterday,” I lie off the cuff, loathing myself for lying again, but not knowing what else to do.
Her frown deepens. “Oh?”
I set down my coffee and kill two birds with one stone, turning toward the cabinet with the ibuprofen to fish some out and avoid my sister’s eyes. “Yeah, I’m okay to take it out of the sling now.”
“Huh. I figured shoulder injuries would need longer than that to heal. That seems pretty fast.”
“I didn’t break it right before I came home. It was a little while before I left.”
That feels good, sharing some truth.
Bea makes an understanding noise. “Of course. I didn’t consider that you’ve been healing for a while.”
“Plus,” I add, “you know how they’re always changing what they recommend, how soon you start using it, what you can and can’t do.” I make a derisive noise in the back of my throat. “Doctors.”
Of course, that’s when I remember her boyfriend’s a pediatrician. “I mean, besides—”
“Chill your cheeky briefs,” she says, pushing off the couch, mug in hand. “I’m not offended.”
I peer down, and lo and behold, I am indeed in my cheeky briefs. “I coulda sworn I put on pants.”
Her hand lands gently on my messy bun, which she tweaks affectionately. “I think you might still be a little drunk.”
“It’s possible.” Cautiously, I try for another sip of coffee. “I inherited Mom’s knack for languages but not her tolerance for whiskey.”
“Only Jules inherited Mom’s tolerance for whiskey, which is freakish and unfair.” Bea tops off her mug and leans against the counter beside me. “So. How much do you remember after you passed out in the closet?”
Oh boy. Here we go. “Nothing. Why? Did I reveal myself from my hiding spot in some gloating and spectacularly inebriated fashion?”
A little nervous laugh trickles out of her. She takes a gulp of coffee. Then another. “Not exactly.”
Unease slithers down my spine. “What happened?”
“It’s not a big deal.” Bea sets her mug in the sink, the dregs swirling around the bottom.
“That’s exactly what you say when something is a big deal.”
“Christopherfoundyouandputyoutobedthat’sit.”
I blink at her. “I . . . He . . . What?”
She walks backward, which is not a wise idea for Bea—she’s the only one in the family more accident-prone than me. “Christopher. He found you. Put you to bed.” She dusts off her hands. “No big. That’s it.”
Hazy, liquor-soaked memories saturate my brain and float to the surface. I remember now, my head flopping onto a shoulder, my cheek pressing into a solid chest that radiated heat, hard and warm as a sunbaked boulder.
I remember breathing in that familiar scent, spicy woodsmoke, soft as a whisper on his clothes and skin.
Oh God. His skin. I buried my face in it. I wrapped my arm around him. I touched him.
“Are you okay?” Bea asks.
I scrub my face. “Brilliant. Fabulous.”
“You’re upset.”
“Christopher carried my drunk ass to bed like a damsel in distress after he found me spooning a whiskey bottle in a closet, yes, I’m upset!”
“To be fair, Jamie said they did try to wake you up. The damsel-in-distress bit was a last resort.”
“Argh. I’m . . .” I press the heels of my hands against my shut eyes, savoring the temporary relief from the pain thudding behind them. “I’m just upset with myself”—and Christopher, because he’s very easy to be upset with. “I don’t like looking back at a situation and seeing what a mess I was.”