Page 15 of Safe Word
I put my elbows on my knees and folded my hands under my chin. I needed to do something with my hands to keep me from reaching for her. She was too quiet. I looked over at her, hoping the current of want flowing through me didn’t push me closer. I successfully tore my attention away from her and picked the remote control up from the coffee table. Once I turned the TV on to break the silence, she spoke up.
“I feel like I should regret what we did last night, but I don’t. Do you?”
It would have been easier to just say yes and reiterate her statement that it was a mistake. I didn’t like lying. Plus, once I got it in the air, I would feel better. Instead of leaning into the lie, I told the truth.
“Not at all.”
She released an inaudible sigh, releasing the tension between us. Silently, we watched a movie that I didn’t pay one bit of attention to. I couldn’t watch a movie when I was so busy watching her. I couldn’t stop paying attention to the way her eyes wrinkled when she laughed or the way her heart pounded at the base of her throat. Carteay had always been captivating, but now that she was at my house, being herself, she was a wonder.
“I wish I could stay here forever. Don’t worry. I won’t try, but I wish I could.”
“You know you can stay as long as you want to. I mean that. Stay as long as you need to, and you can have access to anything I have.”
“What if me being here, this situation, ruins our friendship?”
“It might, but my only concern is saving you.” At least that part was true. “I’m going to do everything in my power to help you, but you have to help me. You have to help me resist you because I don’t know if I can do that anymore. My judgement is all fucked up.”
She slid closer to me on the couch. The heat of her body made me want to pull her into my lap.
“I don’t know if I’ll be any help. I’ve been sitting here thinking that if there’s a next time, I won’t call it a mistake. I’ve been talking myself out of kissing you because there is no way for me to lie my way into making you think I didn’t mean it a second time.”
My eyes fell to her lips as I weighed my options. I was pissed with myself before the words left my mouth. “I would suggest you not kiss me then,” I said with a deep sigh. “Because I know damn well I’m not going to pretend like any of this was a mistake.”
She was in my lap in an instant. Her small hands were quick as they moved to my face. Her thumb brushed my bottom lip before she landed a quick kiss.
“I don’t want to take over your life with my problems, Kannon. I just need a week or so to breathe, just one week away from the world.”
The relief of knowing that I at least had her for a week flushed through me like a shot of bourbon. I nodded. “One week. I’ll keep the world out while you just keep breathing.”
“One week,” she said, smiling like I’d signed a permission slip to allow her access to my life. I essentially had.
My heart sank when she dismounted and returned to her seat next to me. I immediately missed the warmth of her. My phone rang from wherever it was in the house, reminding me that I couldn’t exactly hide out from the world, not completely anyway. I had a business to run. I fought back the urge to sigh as I stood and went in search of my phone. I found it on the kitchen counter and answered Blaine’s call before the phone stopped ringing.
“Kross said you might need me.”
“That nigga talks too much. What else did he tell you?”
“He just said for me to call you. What the hell y’all clowns got going on?”
“First of all, go to hell. Second, I’m going to text you some information that I need you to look into. Also, get me a list of lawyers who dominate in contract law. Only the ones with a ninety five percent success rate or better. Let Jyree know I might need him later this week.”
“Got it. Anything else?”
“I’ll probably be off the grid for a while. Hold it down for me.”
“You know I’m the one that really runs shit anyway.”
“I’ll let you have that. That means my phone shouldn’t be ringing off the hook. I’ll tap back in at the end of the week.”
“Cool.”
“Don’t run my shit in the ground before I get back.”
He laughed but didn’t argue. “I got you.”
I ended the call and mapped out a couple of routes to local places that I could take Carrie if she didn’t want to stay cooped up in the house for the whole week. Either way was good with me. I didn’t mind laying low for a few days. I’d learned to stand in the gap a long time ago.
There were some openings that you needed to stand in and others that you had to become. For Carteay, I wanted to be both things. I wanted to be both a threshold and a barrier. She needed that.
