Noah hated himself for what he’d done to her, hated that he hadn’t just let her go, but he couldn’t. Going to her, he hunkered down beside her chair and gripped the back of it so he wouldn’t give in to the urge to touch her again without her permission. “I’m sorry.” The words were inadequate, but they were all he had. “I’m so sorry, Kit.”
Seeing her like this, Noah wanted to punch himself, kick himself. If anyone else had hurt Kit this way, it was exactly what Noah would’ve done. “I don’t expect you to forgive me, but please don’t shut me out.” His blood roared in his ears, his face flushing burning hot then going ice-cold when she didn’t raise her head. “I can’t breathe knowing you hate me.”
Kit looked at him at last, her face ravaged by tears. Then she was in his arms, that stunning tear-wet face buried against his neck. He held her as she cried, and he called himself a selfish bastard, and it was true, but one other thing was also true: “Day or night, rain or shine, I’ll be there for you,” he whispered against her ear, his hand cupping the back of her head, and his arms around her.
His hand was the one that trembled this time. “Just be my friend.” Laugh again with him, remind him that life wasn’t only nightmares and pain, make him feel as if he could be a better man if he tried hard enough. “Don’t give up on me. Please don’t.”
“I want a promise,” she said after too long, her tears having soaked the shoulder of his shirt.
Wary, he looked at her as she sat back up, her eyes puffy and her cheeks shining with the remnants of her tears. There were some promises he simply couldn’t make, some promises he was too broken to keep.
Taking a shuddering breath, she said, “Promise me that you’ll never again even think of doing what you almost did in that motel room.” A harsh demand. “You promise me, Noah, because I can’t go through that again.”
“I promise,” he said without hesitation. “Never again.”
Kit grabbed one of the pretty napkins she’d put on the table and wiped her face before dropping her hand to her thigh, her fingers clenched around the napkin.
He waited, his pulse a huge, loud thing that drowned out his breathing.
“Okay,” she said, so softly it was less than a whisper. “We’ll be friends.”
Kit didn’t know what she was doing agreeing to be Noah’s friend, didn’t even know if they could salvage that relationship from the wreckage. But ten minutes later, as she watched him pull the ice cream from the freezer, she couldn’t deny the need inside her.
As she’d confessed to Molly, she’d missed him too. So much.
She wished she didn’t, would do everything in her power to bury that need going forward. It wasn’t the right way to enter into a friendship, but it was the only way she might survive it. “One scoop for me,” she said, when he began to dish out the dessert.
“You sure?” A sinful, tempting smile. “You love this stuff.”
Butterflies in her stomach, an acute pain in her heart. “I’ll get sick if I start eating too much rich food at once—and I already had pizza.”
“Right, I never thought about that.” Putting a couple more scoops in his bowl, he placed both bowls on the table before returning the tub to the freezer.
The light caught on the gold of his hair, the strands silky and bright and just long enough to slide forward until he shoved them back with a thrust of his hand. She’d always loved Noah’s hair, always wanted to touch it. Taking a quiet breath that hurt going in, she forced herself to look away.
Noah wasn’t for her, would never be for her.
“So,” he said, sliding into his chair, “are you excited about your full-fat latte tomorrow morning?”
She’d made that laughing comment in an interview. It messed her up to know he’d watched it, remembered. “I decided to save the lattes for next week, when my stomach’s had time to recover from the movie diet.” It was all but impossible to sound natural when her emotions were a black turbulence inside her.