Page 42 of The Infinite Light of Dust

She was quiet for a few seconds. When I looked at her, she was staring out the window at the trees as we passed.

“And which version of you do I know?” she finally asked.

“The only one that matters.”

“That’s not a real answer.”

She was too clever to accept my bland response. “You know the me that no one else does, so it is a real answer. The man you know, flaws and all, is someone only you have met. Truly.”

Karina looked at me and curled her legs up on the seat, wrapping her forearm around her shins. Her eyes were soft and accepting, deciding to take my response at face value and let it go, for now. She was the one person I’d ever opened up to in this way, one of the only people I’d ever trusted in my life, and that meant a lot. I had fucked up when it came to her, and she had forgiven me, but who knew how long it would be until everything unraveled with her father. I was lying to her, even now, even as she trusted my words, and we drove in near silence with only the sound of her playlist in the car.

Memories flashed through my mind like an open camera roll. Her father the first time I met him, dirt and dust covering every part of his face, his gun against his chest. Her soft, welcoming eyes the first time I saw her at the massage studio. Him again, clean and shaven, threating Mendoza into silence, using his power in the most disgusting way. Her rambling to me on the living room floor as she painted her nails, laughing and unguarded. The silent shock in his eyes when I walked into his home for the first time with his daughter. Her voice when she comforted the darkest parts of me. Him showing up at her house and ruining everything. Him begging me to take his daughter away from here. The devastation in her eyes when she learned the truth. There I was, repeating history, and I couldn’t stop it. Technically, I could, but I wasn’t. I should have told her everything, but I couldn’t bring myself to. I loved her, but I hated him more.

The thought made my stomach turn, and I knew how fucked up it was. But I glanced at her again in the passenger seat and decided to keep the secret a little longer.

Fischer and Elodie were in the living room when we got back to Karina’s house. Elodie had just gotten off work and it was Karina’s turn to go in. I suspected their boss hated me at this point since both were missing so much work lately and by proxy I was to blame. While Karina showered, I put her laundry in the washer, folding the pile of towels that had been in the dryer. The dryer filter was covered in lint so I cleaned it off, wiped down her counters, and washed the dishes in the sink. When she emerged, her hair wet and in a braid that was falling apart, I was drying a bowl.

“You didn’t have to do that,” she said, lowering my hand with the bowl and towel.

“I know, but I did anyway.” I kissed her forehead and placed the bowl in the drying rack. I put my hands on her shoulders and turned her around gently to fix her braid.

“You’re spoiling me and I’m going to get too used to it,” she told me, her tone split, half joking, half worried.

It seemed a bit ominous, and paranoia crept in, as if her words were a reminder that I knew deep down that this was all temporary, a fragile hourglass, slowly dropping sand as the time passed.

“You should expect to be treated this way, Karina. Nothing less. Promise me?” I tied the band around the bottom of her hair and turned her around again.

Kissing her forehead, then the bridge of her nose, then her lips, I felt impossibly attached to her with every moment we spent together. But everything was going too well in my life, so I was expecting a tornado to come rip it apart. My fate wasn’t to be gifted a happy, comfortable life with Karina—to live in a beautiful home with our children running around. I knew better than that. My sins would catch up to me, and I was practically begging them to by complicating Karina’s life day by day and not just going away and leaving her to have a calm, honest life. She trusted me, and that fucking killed me.

There was a war waging inside of me. I wanted the best for her, I really fucking did, and I wished like hell that the best for her could be me at the end. But I wasn’t the best for anyone and I seemed to consistently leave a path of destruction in my wake.

“As long as you keep doing it, I’ll keep expecting it. Are you hungry? I can reheat some of the food your ma sent home with us before I leave?” she offered.

My ma had sent us off with two stacks of Tupperware full of dumplings, shrimp and grits, bread, steamed purple potatoes . . . I didn’t catch all of it. I think some ham or beef too. Food had always been one way for her to show her affection. Even on nights when she worked until dawn stocking shelves at the local grocery store, she would make sure there was always food in the house for me and Tay. I could imagine Karina as that type of mother. Always thinking ahead for her children and doing anything, literally anything, for them. She put me and everyone around her first; I couldn’t imagine how extreme her empathy would be for her children. How lucky they would be.

Instead of promising her anything that I wasn’t sure I could keep, I lifted her chin with my thumb and had her eyes touch mine. Her cheeks flushed pink, and I kissed her shiny lips, tasting the coconut-flavored lip balm she had been using lately.

“I’ll wait for you to get home and then we can eat together. I have a couple of errands to run and I need to put up some drywall, but if your brother helps me I’ll be done and here waiting when your shift is over.”

“I love the sound of that.” She grinned, lifting herself onto her toes to kiss me.

“Can you two get a fucking room?” Fischer groaned, striding into the kitchen.

“This is my house. So if you don’t like it, get out,” Karina said and kissed me again.

“Come onnnn . . .” he whined.

“You’ve been having a secret relationship with mymarriedbest friend, so I don’t want to hear a word from you.” She pointed her finger at him. She was teasing him, but she was right as hell.

He smiled, the length of it going nearly from ear to ear. “Touché, Kare. Touché.”

Fischer grabbed a glass and filled it with water from the sink before leaving us in the kitchen again.

“I’ll be back in a few hours,” I told her, hugging my arms around her body, inhaling her intoxicating scent.

“Me too,” she responded. “I love you, Kael.”

I didn’t deserve her love, but I needed it to survive for as long as I could take it.

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