Except, God, I really do. I have so many questions, even though I’m scared of the answers. I’m scared I’ll like his answers. And if I like those answers, I’m scared most of how easily I could lower my guard and let him in.
“I won’t talk, then,” he calls back. “I’ll walk you home, and then I’ll go, I promise.”
I’m about to tell Christopher where he can shove his promise when I notice a guy walking toward me down a perpendicular sidewalk. My shoulders tense. I’ve been on my own long enough to trust my instincts about these things. Immediately, I turn and close the distance between me and Christopher, falling into step beside him. The man pauses when he notices Christopher now beside me, then he starts toward the street, like he’s going to cross.
My heart pounds. I’m waiting for some snide remark from Christopher about his point being made, but none comes. Instead, he sets a hand low on my back and takes one smooth step around me so he’s walking on the outside of the sidewalk, his body close to mine, shielding me from the man.
I scowl, despising myself for the rush of relief cascading through me. I don’t need protection. Or care. But some small part of me that’s been alone for so long, that’s worn out from having to always look over my shoulder, assume the worst, be on the defense, stretches out and sighs like a cat in its favorite sunny corner.
I don’t want to like how he’s behaving. But I do.
After three long blocks of spinning my gears, I peer up at him, my curiosity about this odd one-eighty too intense to keep me from examining him.
He frowns into the distance, hands in his pockets. Then he glances my way and catches me staring at him.
“You really do look like shit,” I tell him honestly.
He sighs tiredly. “I feel like shit.”
I can’t manage to ignore the band of concern squeezing my ribs. “What’s wrong? Make yourself less than a million dollars today? Were you for once in your life turned down by someone with a square head on their shoulders?”
His mouth lifts faintly at the corner as he stares back ahead. “I wish it were that simple. You, on the other hand,” he says, throwing me another one of those charm-the-pants-off-a-nun looks, “do not look like someone who chugged a quarter bottle of whiskey and slept half the night in a closet.”
“Stop it.”
His eyes widen again, that Casanova smile slipping. “Stop what?”
“Saying nice things you don’t mean. Flirting. I look underslept and hungover, my hair’s a bird’s nest, I smell like the whiskey I’m still titrating out of my system, and we both know it.”
“I know what you’re doing, and it doesn’t work like that. You can’t gross me out, Kate. I’ve seen it all with you. You’ve literally shit on me before. And puked, for that matter.”
I glare at him. “I was an infant.”
“With a vendetta against dashing elementary school boys.”
“More like with a prophetic gift for recognizing little shits when I meet them,” I mutter.
He slaps a hand over his heart. “I’m wounded.”
“Like you care what I think.”
Peering my way, Christopher sighs heavily, the teasing humor suddenly drained between us. He stops walking, and I stop, too. “Kate . . .”
“You promised no talking.”
He ignores me. “Do you remember last night?”
Now it’s my turn to ignore him. I start walking again, the fastest I have yet. I’m only one block from the apartment now. I need a hot shower and ten hours of sleep and miles between me and this weird new side of Christopher and whatever scheme he has going on, asking these questions, bringing up something best left behind.
“Kate, stop running off.”
“As you said on Thanksgiving,” I tell him over my shoulder, “it’s what I do best.”
“I’m sorry, all right?”
I come to such a sudden stop, he slams into me, clutching my body and steadying me. I stare up at him. “Did you . . . just . . . apologize?”
His jaw ticks. He’s breathing roughly, staring down at me. “Yes. I apologized and I apologize now. For what I said at Thanksgiving. For losing my shit on you in front of the family . . . For a lot of things.”
I search his eyes. I’m so disoriented, I’d swear the world’s turned upside down. “Is this all because of last night? What happened? Did I say something?”
“Not all, no. But . . . yes, somewhat.” He hesitates, then says, quieter, “It messed me up, Kate.”
“So, what? You had a sudden crisis of conscience? Based on some drunken nonsense I muttered in my sleep, you determined, after twenty-seven years of acting like I’m either as invisible as the breeze or gum stuck on your shoe, that you were going to buy me flowers, send some doughnuts, and boom, problem solved?”
He pinches the bridge of his nose and sighs. “Yes. No. I didn’t—”
“Listen to me.” I step closer, holding his eyes. “Whatever I said last night, whatever made you decide to have a personality transplant and treat me any different than you ever have, ignore it. It was nonsense.”
He stares down at me, intense, wary, something turning his expression fierce and unreadable. “I don’t think it was, Kate.”
My heart plummets to my feet. Oh God, what did I say? I know my track record, that when I’m drunk, I unfortunately tend to say things I’ve buried deep inside.
Some of it is pure, whimsical silliness.
Some of it is my deepest, most vulnerable feelings.
Judging by how Christopher’s looking at me, it was the latter.
“You had no right,” I tell him, barely holding back my fury, “to take advantage of me like that.”
“I didn’t,” he says, shaking his head. “I wasn’t trying to. You wouldn’t shut up. Trust me, all I wanted was to drop you on that bed and get the hell away.”
“Of course!” I yell. “All you’ve ever wanted is to shit on me or get rid of me as fast as you can, and the one time you didn’t is when you had a chance to take advantage of my uninhibited state. How shocking!”
“It wasn’t like that,” he says sharply, stepping closer. “You think I wanted to hold you, to watch you smile in your sleep and say weird, funny shit, to feel your arm wrap around my neck like it was supposed to be there? I didn’t. I never asked for that.”
“No one asked you to be Mr. Fucking Chivalrous, Christopher!”
“That’s the problem, Kate,” he mutters between clenched teeth, so close his thighs brush mine, my flowers the only thing keeping us apart. “I can’t help it, not with you. And then you had to open your goddamn mouth—”
“Ignore it,” I tell him. “Just ignore what I said—”
“You said I hated you,” he grinds out. “I never . . . I never meant . . .”
I stare up at him, trying and failing to hide the sadness that bleeds into my voice. “You do hate me.”
“You infuriating woman, I have never hated you.”
“Maybe you’ve never said it,” I tell him, “but you’ve acted like you hated me.”
“If I have, so have you.”
I shove his arm, but he doesn’t budge. “You started it.”
“Because I had to.”
I open my mouth to challenge that, but my words die away the moment his hand curves along my jaw.
“Because you,” he whispers, his head lowering, “have tortured me. For as long as I can remember. And I have dealt with it terribly, I admit that. I pushed you away and put our differences between us, and you gave it right back to me, but I never, ever . . .”
His mouth hovers so close to mine, I breathe him in. I feel him breathe me in, too. His thumb slides along my jaw. His nose grazes mine.
“I never hated you, Kate. And I can’t stand for you to think otherwise.”
“You can’t just . . . say that,” I whisper, my eyes slipping shut. His thumb drifts down my throat, tender, featherlight, scattering sparks beneath my skin.
“I know.”
“It doesn’t change anything,” I tell him, my body listing traitorously toward him.
“Not yet,” he says quietly. “But I’m trying.”
“How? We can’t stand each other.”
I hear the smile in his voice. “You so sure about that?”
My eyes drift open, meeting his. “What?”
His gaze drops to my lips. “My mouth is very, very close to yours, Kate.”
I swallow. “I’m aware.”
“And you want it there. Otherwise, I’d have a knee in my nuts right now.”
A breathy, exasperated laugh leaves me. “You’re such an arrogant—”