Page 53 of Fierce Love
Hollyn and I aren’t speaking.
Barely a word has passed between us since I went to their apartment to pick them up for the day of sightseeing and visiting their old haunts.
We ride in the car to their old apartment with the girls talking to the two of us or to each other, but we’ve frozen one another out, a thick layer of ice between us. As though both of us decided last night that we aren’t going to start something but instead draw it to a close.
This stop and start with her is painful, torturous.
When we were teenagers, we were full throttle from the moment we met. I never had to put up with any back-and-forth, and even once Hollyn decided we were done, she didn’t lead me on, drag it out. We had a clean break, which I hated at the time.Loathed more than anything that had ever happened to me. Her complete lack of caring broke something in me—I wasn’t lying about that—and I think the only thing that’ll heal that wound is to have her choose me. To have her decide that I’m worthy of theforeverlabel I so desperately want.
As much as I long to chase her, I need to know she’s choosing me. I’ll woo, but I won’t chase.
“When we’re done here, I want to meet some friends for coffee,” Kinsley says as we pull up to their apartment building.
“Coffee?” I ask, surprised, trying to hide my sour mood, not wanting to spoil Kinsley and Indy’s day. “You drink coffee?”
“I do here. Everyone does.” She glances at her sister, looking for approval. “It’s one of the things we do together when Hollyn’s not working. Which, like, isn’t a lot, but still…” She seems suddenly uncertain, as though she might be giving too much away. “We have a coffee shop down the street that I meet my friends at when Hollyn is working.”
“If you want to hang out with your friends, that’s fine with me,” I say.
Hollyn is staring out the other window, lost in thoughts I can’t access.
A bright smile splits Kinsley’s face, and she jumps out of the car, dragging Indy behind her. Hollyn leaves behind them. I tell our driver to find somewhere to park and I’ll let him know when we’re ready. I follow the three of them into the entrance and up the stairs to the second floor.
The building is older but not as ratty as I feared. Hollyn must make fairly good money at Reyes and Cruz. Once we’re at the apartment door, Hollyn bites her lip and glances at me over her shoulder. Her long auburn hair falls across her cheek.
“You can just wait here if you want,” she says.
If she thinks I’m missing a chance to see what her life has been like, who she’s become, she’s dead wrong.
“I’ll stay out of the way,” I say, not exactly agreeing with her suggestion.
As soon as the door is open, Kinsley drags Indy into the apartment, but they don’t get far before they stop. The square footage is tiny—even smaller than her Aunt Verna’s in Bellerive.
“This is where you’ve been living,” I say, and I can hear the judgement in my voice, and I silently curse myself.
“Yes,” Hollyn says, her tone bristling. “New York is an expensive city.”
“I didn’t mean that—”
“Look,” Kinsley says, pulling down what appears to be a cupboard to reveal a single bed. “I sleep here, and my sister has the bedroom. Feels like so long ago already.”
While Kinsley shows Indy where all her clothes are hidden in drawers and closets that should probably hold other important things, I trail Hollyn to her bedroom.
“You’ve been happy here?” I ask, drilling into the ice between us, testing its depth.
“Happier than I ever was in Bellerive,” she says, and it comes out so quickly and smoothly that I know she means it. She spares me a glance from the edge of her shoebox closet. “I didn’t mean… that wasn’t meant to be…”
A dig. Still a hit, intended or not.
Maybe trying to pursue herisa lost cause. I can’t seem to break through long enough to leave an impact. The thought causes a stone to drop into my stomach. Maybe I’m fooling myself to think whatever is between us is enough to overcome the past, the trauma of her upbringing, whatever sent her running and has kept her from stopping. I drag a hand down my face and turn away from her, going the few steps it takes me to be back in the main room.
Kinsley has another backpack slung across her shoulder, and drawers are flung open. “I’m never coming back here,” she says to me and Indy.
I’m tempted to tell her that I agree, that the idea of the two of them living in this tiny apartment is depressing as fuck, but Hollyn might literally murder me if I fanned the flames of Kinsley’s discontent.
“Some of my friends are meeting us at Kaelin’s Coffee in twenty minutes,” Kinsley calls out to Hollyn. “We’re leaving.”
Hollyn appears behind me. “I didn’t say yes to this.”
