Page 33 of Kiss Me

“Let go of me,” she mumbles, but there’s no real force behind it.

And when I pull her into my arms, wrapping them around her, she only fights a little before surrendering to my embrace. Still, it takes a few more seconds before Tania completely lets go and wraps her arms around my waist.

She doesn’t make a sound for a long while.

Soon enough, though, I sense her body trembling. Tania tucks her face against my chest and the shaking of her body intensifies.

She’s crying.

This time the reason I pick her up isn’t because of a ruse to protect her identity from onlookers.

There’s no one around to witness this moment. And Tania can walk on her own. But I don’t want her to.

I lift her into my arms and proceed to the stairs because I don’t want any separation between our bodies. She must want the same thing because her arms wrap tightly around my neck.

The only drawback is that she’s still wearing her winter clothing. I move to the spacious king size bed and sit with her in my lap, simply holding onto her.

I don’t know for how long we sit this way, but I remain determined to allow her to hold onto me for as long as she needs. Even as her tears dampen the collar of my sweater, saturating the T-shirt I have on underneath.

Those tears soak through to my very soul, to a hole I hadn’t even realized existed. Not until this very moment.

Slowly, Tania pulls back, blinking at me with red, swollen eyes. Her cheeks are stained with tear tracks down them.

I wipe away the few remaining tears while she violently brushes away others. As if she’s embarrassed over becoming this emotional.

I take both of her wrists into mine, stopping her movements. Tania’s eyes meet mine, and I suspect she’s about to apologize.

“Don’t,” I tell her with a shake of my head.

She clears her throat instead, before pushing out a deep, shuddering breath.

In the silence, I undo the velcro covering of her coat’s zipper, before sliding it open. Once I peel the coat off her body, I toss it onto the chair in the corner of the room. Without giving much consideration as to why I’m taking such care with her, I undo her boots as well.

“Th-Thank you,” Tania finally says once she’s stripped down to just her indoor clothing.

“What are you thanking me for?”

“You won’t let me apologize so I figured saying thank you was the next best thing.”

A frown forms on my lips. “If your thank you is just a form of an apology, then you can keep it.”

She surprises me by laughing and ducking her head. “How do you even make a thank you into a negative thing?”

I give her a one shoulder shrug. “My father used to tell me to keep my apologies and my thank yous to myself and just fucking do better next time,” I say the second half in the stern voice that I use to imitate my father.

While the original point of my comment was meant to be a joke, it doesn’t disguise the bite of pain that lances through my chest.

“That sounds kind of cruel.”

Tania’s comment has me staring into her eyes.

Looking into them brings me out of thoughts about my father. I run a thumb down the side of her face, which causes her to suck her bottom lip in between her teeth.

“So does being in need of a break so much that you have to fake an injury to get it.”

When she goes to duck her head again, I stop her with my hand on her chin. “You don’t have anything to be ashamed of.”

She still manages to turn her head away from me. “You were right, though. I’m lying to everyone who looks up to me. Even Liza doesn’t know the truth. And I know my dad would freak out if I told him.”

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