Page 56 of Hold You Close
“I’ll be right back,” she says, her heels clicking on the tile as she walks away from me. A moment later, I hear the bathroom door close.
“Fuck.” I run a hand through my hair. We didn’t use a condom—I always used a condom. Never, not once in the twenty years I’d been having sex had I ever been tempted to fuck someone without one. Jolene wouldn’t even let me near her without one, she was so worried about getting pregnant and tipping the scale one ounce above her ideal body weight. But just now with London, it hadn’t even occurred to me to stop and go get one. What the hell was I thinking?
Now she’s going to come out here squawking about diseases and risks and how we both have to go get tested. Well, I get tested often enough that I have results from a month ago, and I haven’t been with anyone since then but her. And fuck her if she doesn’t believe me!
Angrily, I pull on my pants and tie the drawstring. When I hear the bathroom door open, I widen my stance and hoist up my chest a little, preparing for the fight.
But when she comes around the corner into the front hall, she doesn’t look too battle-ready. She looks sort of sad and vulnerable. With her eyes on the floor, carrying her heels, she walks barefoot over to her skirt and blouse, scooping them up. Then she turns to me. “We should talk, don’t you think?”
I’m so thrown by the change in her demeanor, I can’t think. “Okay.”
“Give me a minute to get dressed.” Her eyes meet mine, and they’re not accusatory or cold. They’re soft. Her voice is soft, too. “I promise I will not run away. I just want to put my clothes back on.”
“That’s fine,” I say, unsure how to tread these unfamiliar waters. “You can use my room.”
“Thanks.”
I follow her to the kitchen, where she turns down the hallway to my room. Seeing her walk that way, with her head down, her shoulders rounded, arms clutching her clothes, sort of makes me feel bad that I just banged her against the front door. What kind of animal am I?
Frowning, I turn on the Keurig, grab a coffee pod from the pantry, and stick it in. While I wait for it to brew, I lean back against the counter and rub my face with both hands. More than anything, I wish Sabrina was around so I could ask for advice. I don’t understand London at all. There’s obviously still something between us, and it could be good, but we insist on fighting each other. Why? Is it our history? Do I need to come clean about what I did?
Back when it all went down, I planned on telling her the truth eventually. But I needed her to take that scholarship and go away to school first. I figured I’d tell her when she graduated. I never dreamed she’d still be so mad she’d refuse to even talk to me. When they say hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, let me assure you, they are not kidding. London wouldn’t even be in the same room with me for a while, and when she was, her eyes were like knives on my skin.
At that point I figured, fuck her. She didn’t want to hear me out? Fine. She didn’t want to know I’d only done it for her? Fine. She didn’t want to hear me say she was the only girl I’d ever loved and wanted to give us another chance? Fine. It wasn’t like I’d be lonely.
From then on, it was war between us.
But now that Sabrina’s death has thrown us together, I find myself wishing things could change. I don’t even know what I want exactly, but when I hear the bedroom door open and bare feet coming down the hall, I make up my mind to try harder not to be an asshole, even if she picks a fight.
She appears in the kitchen, carrying her shoes in one hand. My heart beats faster at the sight of her—she’s redone her hair, pulling it back off her face so her green eyes look huge and luminous. Her cheeks are flushed, and her lips look a little swollen. She’s as beautiful as she was at seventeen—more, even.
“Do you want some coffee?” I ask.
“Sure.” She sets her shoes down next to the island.
“What flavor?” I go into the pantry and look in the sampler box. “My housekeeper buys all kinds of them. I’ve got French vanilla, hazelnut, butter toffee, Krispy Kreme—”
“French vanilla is fine.”
“Regular or decaf?”
“Regular.”
“You got it.” I grab it from the box and exit the pantry. She’s still standing across the kitchen from me, holding one elbow, one bare foot covering the other.
When I pull out the pod I used, I saw that I made for myself exactly what she chose. “Here. You can have this one.” Feeling magnanimous, I take the full, steaming cup from the machine and set it next to her on the island.
“Are you sure?”
“Positive.” I start brewing the second cup and turn around to face her. “So.”
“So.”
We stand there staring at each other for a moment. “You came over to talk?”
She nods. “Yes.”
I fold my arms over my chest and lean back against the counter. “What about? The weekend travel thing? Because we can work that out. I’m sorry I blew up about that.” Apologizing doesn’t come easy for me, and she seems to know it judging by the stunned expression on her face.
