She lay boneless and damp and hot on granite so hard and cold. He straightened slowly, as if every muscle in his body hurt. She couldn’t look at him. Just this flicker of her eyelashes that showed him to her: completely dressed, her only mark on him two prints of powdered sugar on his shoulders and the voluptuousness of his mouth, as he stood over her sugar-dusted nakedness, stroking her slowly, breasts to belly, down her spine, over her hips, those gentle, reassuring touches he had long ago learned she needed, after sex, the ones that made her feel so loved, that told her that he still found her body beautiful after he was done wanting it. He had always done that for her, once he knew she needed it, always, always, always, made sure to take his time afterward, to stroke her and caress her before he fell asleep or left the bed.
Except he wasn’t done wanting, was he? He hadn’t come—had he? He was still completely dressed. Her gaze skated down his body, and—no, he hadn’t come.
She could not think. She bent her arms to hide her face. But then she had to look at him again, because—well, she had to see.
Their eyes held. His were so gorgeous, their beauty all for her, her special treasure that no one else had the sense to see. You had to know him so well to know the color of his eyes; his friends couldn’t even remember it, and yet she had always known, right from the first moment he stood looking down at her in his mother’s gardens and she looked back up into those hazel eyes, and her heart caught.
Her heart had been so smart. Suicidal in its bright optimism, clueless as to what would come, but still—so smart, to so immediately respond to him.
He had deserved her heart. He had deserved better.
From the very first, he had always been so careful to give her the very best of himself.
She was the one. She was the one who hadn’t been able to give him something good enough back. It had been her job to be happy, it was what she brought to their couple, it was who she was in life, the happy person, and then, and then . . .
She drew a breath in and sighed it out, shaky, shivery. She was so entirely naked here on this granite. All illusion of distance gone.
And yet she hadn’t melted out of existence, as she expected. Life never let her escape just by destroying her completely, no matter how convinced she was, in the moment, that she was being destroyed.
“I probably shouldn’t have done that,” he said low, touching a streak of sugar on her cheek. His beautiful eyes were so very close, his expression driven, torn. “I don’t know anymore. I don’t think I’ve gotten anything right since you first got pregnant.” His fingers sifted her hair, sticking now from the sugar. “It made me realize that you were always the one who got us right. Who made us happy.” His mouth twisted on such a hard-contained wave of grief and pain that she wanted to catch him in a tight fist, say, No! It wasn’t you. It was me. I was the one who went wrong. “I tried, though.” He stepped away from her.
A moment later, still lying there naked on a counter in powdered sugar, she heard the front door open and close.
And Kai curled into a fetal ball, pulling sugar-coated arms over her face and bending sugar-coated legs into her naked belly, and wept until she couldn’t weep anymore.
Chapter Two
Heavy, ragged, hot sobs like she had cried for the second miscarriage and never been able to cry since, not even for the third, not even when she left Kurt, when the tears had been weak, exhausted things that would come out of nowhere and slide aimlessly down her cheeks, as if they didn’t even have the strength left in them to heal.
A long time passed before the discomfort of the granite got to her, and the cold of her naked body, and the stickiness of sugar melted by sweat and tears into her skin and hair. Finally she peeled herself off the island to take a shower. The water had been running over her for a good five minutes before it slowly penetrated her blank exhaustion that she liked it—how warm it was.
She hadn’t really liked the way something felt in a long time.
Drying herself off slowly, she almost liked the way the towel felt, too—and yet it almost hurt. As if all her skin had been exposed to too much sun. It took that wearily acquired skill at putting one damn foot in front of the other, of continuing to survive, to get her back into the empty living area. The artfully arranged open space allowed everyone, even those in the kitchen, to enjoy the view through the great window down into the valley. Except there was no “everyone”. It was a space made for people to share, but she never shared it. The whole point of moving here had been to shut herself away from any and all human hurt again. To protect her both from suffering herself and from inflicting that suffering on others.
Kai moved through the empty house as carefully as if she was climbing out of bed for the first time after a week of the flu. At the great window, she wrapped her arms around herself, staring down into the valley of humanity so far away—and started violently at the sight of Kurt’s car still in the drive.
He hadn’t left?
Oh—she tightened her arms around herself, flushing and vulnerable in a way she hadn’t been even after the very first time they made love, years ago, when she had felt not so much vulnerable but filled with joyful confidence in him, in her body, in everything about them.
But—but where was he?