Page 51 of Star-Crossed
Lyra McKendrick simplyknew.
And it didn’t matter.
It hadn’t affected the way she looked at him. Spoke to him.
It hadn’t even affected the way she gave him shit.
Standing there with the cotton wad of his shirt clutched in his hands, Cy felt unsteady for reasons that—for once—had nothing to do with his own misfortune.
He had managed to keep this one thing a secret from all but his father, his sister, and Ethan, but he couldn’t hide it from her now.
Not here, not tonight.
“I’m sorry,” she said, folding her pants neatly and placing them on a flat rock. “I shouldn’t have just blurted it out like that.”
“It’s okay.” Cy eased himself down on a nearby boulder to remove his boots.
Wearing only a bra, panties, and an expression of concern, Lyra came and sat beside him. “What I mean is, I didn’t mean to pre-empt you.”
“Please,” he said, unable to keep his gaze from sinking into the dark ravine of her cleavage. “Pre-empt me.”
To be naked with a woman andnothave to talk about it for once? There was a refreshing thought.
So why the hell did he find himself unspooling the entire complicated tale for her?
The accident. The aftermath. The surgeries. The agonizing physical therapy. How he’d effectively cut himself off from everyone and everything once he got back to Townsend Harbor. How he’d gradually begun to reintegrate himself for Kiki and Ethan’s benefit. And, okay, for his father’s benefit as well.
Lyra listened intently, silent while a pair of barred owls called to each other somewhere in the trees after he’d finished.
“Well, that explains the repressed rage.” Lyra’s shoulder brushed his as she hugged her legs to her torso.
“Repressed rage?” Cy repeated.
“Yep,” she said.
Cy gave her what he hoped was a neutral look. “I don’t have repressed rage.”
“People as nice as you are to everyone always have repressed rage,” she said with the certainty of fact. “Believe me. I’ve lived on the East Coast for the past five years, and I’ve known you for even longer than that. It’s a topic I’m more than qualified to speak on.”
“It’s not your qualifications I doubt,” Cy said. “It’s the application.”
Lyra only shrugged, which was all the more maddening now that the idea wouldn’t leave his head.
Yeah, he’d been an angry kid, but that was pretty normal for someone who’d lost his mom, right? Following the accident, there had been a lot of pain and frustration, but Cy would like to see anyone come through what he had and not want to curse the heavens…or whatever.
Curse.
That word again.
It rolled around his head like a marble, refusing to settle and stay.
It was the intimacy it implied. That he’d been singled out for suffering.
The very idea of it rankled him. Rinsed him in stinging self-pity. And yet that was exactly how he felt.
“IfI had any rage, and I’m not saying I do, I don’t understand what that has to do with being nice.”
“Well,” Lyra began, then lost the rest of her sentence to a shiver.
