Suddenly, I felt too exhausted to argue. "Please, Kane. Go home. I don't have the energy for this tonight."
"For what?" he asked, and the fact there was honest confusion on his face drained me almost as much as it fired me up. "All of this. The whole Kane show."
"Wait a minute—"
"No. Everything is about you. It always has been. Positive articles for Kane. Make sure Kane looks good. Even our flash in the pan relationship was about you, and I was okay with that back then because I was crazy about you. I'm usually okay with it now because I need this goddamn job. But right now, I’m tired and I’m not working, so please, just leave me alone to look after myself for once."
Kane burst to his feet and headed toward the door.It’s for the best, I told myself. He'd get upset, but surely he'd realize that I was right. I didn't hold the resentment I felt even a week ago, but he couldn't deny facts.
When I expected him to reach for the door handle, he wheeled around and paced back toward me. At the edge of the rug, he turned again. Back and forth, he paced, and I couldn't have said if he was processing what I said, or screaming at me internally.Probably both, I concluded as I watched an angry red creep up his neck.
On the next lap, he altered his course and stomped straight into my bedroom.
"Hey—" I yelled, jumping to my feet and rushing after him. Just inside the doorway, I almost collided with his back, where he'd stalled out in the middle of my room. His shoulders were tight, and as I circled around in front of him, I noticed his eyes were focused on the disheveled pile of covers and pillows that was my unmade bed.
"I hate that other men have shared that with you," he said without looking away from where I slept.
"I hate that it was all about me to you, because for me? It was always you. Darcy, all I ever cared about was you. Even more than swimming. I didn't handle much well back then. Honestly, I was an epic fuckup — well, that's a different story— but you disappeared, and I know it's unfair to bring this up while you're unwell, but you disappeared. You fucking disappeared and I had to readjust to the fact that I fucked up the only good thing I had going in my life. I'm not making the same mistake again. Hate me if you need to, but I'm not leaving you again. I'm going to run you a bath, get you some more Tylenol, and wait on the sofa until you need something."
He was as good as his word. Within the space of twenty minutes, I found myself ensconced in my tub, surrounded by bubbles I wasn’t aware I had in the house. God knew where Kane had found them, but I appreciated it as the comforting fizz of popping bubbles encouraged my shoulders to loosen. The warmth of the water, combined with the stress of the day, and what I was quite sure was the beginning of a cold, left me drowsy. My limbs were loose as they drifted in the water. There was only one problem. Kane's words buzzed through my head like gnats, alighting on my thoughts before taking flight in a maddening frenzy.
I disappeared? Disappearing would mean he didn't know where I was. He knew. Heknewwhere I was, and he didn't show. He left me to deal with everything that happened back then.
His face had been so earnest when he said it, though. It was like we were playing off different sheet music.
Tired of my own thoughts, I pulled myself out of the tub and resolutely avoided thinking about the fact I was naked, with only a thin wall between myself and where Kane waited. Towel off, PJs on. I scrubbed my teeth quickly and moved into the bedroom to find two small white pills lying on my bedside table next to a glass of water. He had even made my bed, the covers pulled back on the near side so I could easily slip in.
"Thank you," I murmured to the empty room.
A grunt came from the direction of the doorway and I startled as Kane straightened from a lean and passed me to flick on the lamp on my bedside table. Returning to the doorway and turning off the overhead light, he jutted his chin toward the bed. “Get in.”
“You wanna get me in bed, Bryson?” I asked, injecting as much sardonicism into the question as possible. The whole situation made me feel too vulnerable, and the worst of it was I wasn’t sure how I wanted him to answer. This caring side of Kane was seductive in a way I didn’t want to acknowledge. It challenged everything I knew about the man and, if I were honest, made my job a lot harder. I had to find the story. Report accurately and without emotion. I thought of the blank page I had stared at for hours earlier in the day. Thought of the vitriolic words I had intended to write when I first took the assignment. It occurred to me I was thinking in the past tense, and I took a moment to try on the idea that maybe my article wouldn’t be the character assassination I had hoped.
Or maybe I was a stupid girl who was once again being sucked into the charming orbit of her first love.
Kane sighed in a way that made me nervous that maybe he could hear my internal dialogue. “Please get into the bed, Rowsthorn. I’ll battle that intellect of yours once we’ve both had a rest.”
His hair was mussed as though he had been running his hands through it, and, for the first time, I noticed the skin under his short beard was paler than usual. The dark shadows under his eyes were what finally got me moving. Clearly, I wasn’t the only one who needed rest, and no matter where I stood on his sudden need to take care of me, he was right. It wasn’t anything that couldn’t wait for morning.
With a curt nod, I slipped in between my covers and waited for him to close the door before I relaxed into my pillows. Closing my eyes, I could hear him move around outside my door. His footfalls were a gentle cadence that I followed back and forth for a few minutes before the telltale groan of my old sofa announced he’d settled in to get some rest of his own.
If I’d had more energy, I would have vehemently denied that it was comforting to have another person in my apartment, but as it was, the speed I fell into a deep sleep may have been the commentary I refused to acknowledge.
Kane
“Kane?”The sound of my name called me from a sleep I was not ready to leave. Tightening my hold on the warm body against mine, I buried my nose in soft hair that smelled vaguely of lavender and tried to return to the best sleep I’d had in too long.
The day before had been a struggle. Seeing Darcy collapse, being too worn out to bring her usual snark, had messed with my head in ways I hadn’t expected. Between one blink and the next, I had jumped between the man taking care of his woman, and the boy taking care of his mother. Those two women, the most important in my life, blended together in my mind despite their physical differences, working me into an anxious mess. I was determined to give Darcy space and sleep on her sofa, close enough to hear if she needed me, but I couldn't stay away. Around midnight, I had convinced myself she would stop breathing in her sleep. So powerful was the fear that I checked her room again and again until concern about waking her with all my moving around made me decide to sleep on the other side of her bed. I hugged the edge as I slipped between the covers, wondering if I should build a pillow barricade so she wouldn’t wake and worry about my intentions.
In sleep, she made the decision for me, as she shuffled across the divide and curled into my side. A part of me knew it wasn’t right. She wasn’t awake to have an opinion, and my anxiety had no bearing on how she felt about me. But a selfish part of me relished the contact, and in the darkness, I savored the moment, drifting to sleep with her warm breath puffing across my ribs.
A featherlight touch brushed along my brow, bringing my attention back to the room, and the bed I didn’t want to leave. Holding my breath, I waited, hoping she’d touch me again. There. She traced gently down the slope of my nose, before adding a second finger and brushing under my eye, and down my cheek. Her touch left me, and I frowned, silently begging her to continue. After the longest of moments, her fingertips traced my lower lip. The breath rushed into me in a gasp, my lungs unaware of the precarious nature of the position we found ourselves in. Unable to resist, I opened my eyes to the most beautiful sight. Hazel eyes, heavy-lidded with sleep, watched with a vulnerability I knew would disappear the moment she became conscious of it. Her cheeks were flushed with the warmth of our bodies, and across her pillow, her lengths of white-blonde hair were a tousled mess.
This was what I wanted. To wake up, just like this. Forever.
Under her fingertips, my lips stretched into a smile that I hoped was as peaceful as I felt in this moment. Happy. It occurred to me that the last time I had felt this way was after our first time. Lying in the grass at the back of Evie’s parents’ property. But like the last time, I feared this would be short-lived. There was so much between us, I wasn’t sure how we could stay in this moment.
As that inevitability crashed into my happy little headspace, Darcy reached up and replaced her fingers with her lips.
