“So, are you working for them again or what?”
I turned to Layla on the bench, squinting against the sun blinding me to anything but her silhouette of dark hair and button nose. “Nah. Dominic offered, but his mom is around a lot to help with Maya, so he’d basically be paying me to watch my own sister.”
“Is Mrs. Sharon still on bedrest?”
“Yeah, it’s only been two days of it, and she was already going stir crazy on the phone last night when I checked in.”
I plucked a leaf from one of the park’s fatter bushes next to us, folding it in halves until I’d folded it to pieces. Chucking it to the side, I cast a look back over to the swings, catching Maya and Charlotte in a ‘who can kick higher’ competition.
Each push of their little legs, they soared higher into the sky until their squeals of laughter could reach the clouds. A soft smile turned up my cheeks, but it fell when I looked past the girls and throng of kale green bushes and spotted the silver Explorer parked behind it all.
I knew Dominic was in there with Ryan, watching me and probably talking about me and all his frustrations with me these past few days. This was a setup they’d arranged to see if we could lure Tommy out and within five hundred feet of me so they could arrest him.
So far, we’d been here for thirty minutes and nothing.
“How was your grandparents’?” I asked, removing my focus from the Explorer.
She huffed and adjusted her heart-shaped sunglasses on her face. “Fine. Boring. Glad to be back even if we’re being used as bait.”
“Yeah, Dominic wasn’t thrilled about the idea, but it’s the only move they’ve got right now.”
“Oh, is your Prince Charming worried about you?” Her pouty lips and dramatic tone were mocking. Both struck the wrong cord in me.
“Can we not go there today?”
I pointed my daggered glare at her, holding her wide-eyed reaction for all of two seconds before moving my focus back to the girls. Layla of course didn’t let my snapping comment go unacknowledged.
“Um, excuse me.” A hand slapped over my thigh, forcing my attention back on her and all the greedy intrigue threaded through her thickly shaped eyebrows. “Did something change since the hotel? You said you two basically agreed to be almost fuck buddies until the divorce.”
“That was before I had to pack up and shack up.”
I slumped my forehead into the palm of my hand, groaning and wanting to rip out this heart of mine that had been on fire for days. The fear of the sickness—the fear of dying from it—had been a relentless burn since the conversation with Dominic’s mom.
Fuck. I didn’t think I wanted to talk about any of this. I’d kept it all in for three days now, packed up and ignoring it was there, but with Layla sitting right there, it all came spilling out as if it’d been waiting on the tip of my tongue all day.
“We agreed to press stop on everything at the beginning of the week, which was fine.” Except it wasn’t. How battered my chest felt proved it wasn’t fine, and I was in trouble. “But we’re both dumbasses and that lasted all of one night. The next morning we were flirting and laughing and he was holding my ankle—”
“Your ankle?”
“Yeah, because it was all he could hold without anyone seeing.”
Because holding me in any way was wrong. We were wrong. Every single torrid bit of us. “We barely lasted twelve hours without falling back into it, and we were sleeping for like nine of those.”
Layla’s face had grown alert, and I knew why. I knew my voice and mannerisms were getting a bit agitated, a bit manic. Emotions I’d kept locked down for three days now were rallying inside of me, readying to charge and fill my mouth with all their dirty little truths.
“It’s just so… easy and stupid.” Exasperation swept my arm wide as I backhanded Layla’s arm. “Oh, and his mom heard it all.”
She grabbed her arm, rubbing it. “His mom who walked in on you two?”
“Yup, and she loves me.”
That got the expected reaction. Eyes bugging, jaw dropping. “What?”
“I know! She just keeps complimenting me and trying to make inside jokes with me like we’re the best of friends,” I exclaimed, heavy breathing working my lungs. “She cornered me the first morning we were there to tell me how happy she was to meet me and how she was so glad Dominic found me.”
“Okay, I’m confused.”
“Thank you!” My hands flew into the air, her already large eyes flying wider as my energy peaked. Compacted adrenaline tingled in my chest as I huffed, “Me too.”
So fucking confused.
“No, no.” She set her delicate fingers on my leg again. “Kat, I’m confused why you’re saying all of this like it’s a bad thing.”
I blanched at my best friend, taken aback. How did she not understand?
The corner of my mouth cracked up, and I looked away from her out to the playground. Wind rolled the leaves and blades of grass in the park, flickering them all in waves that rustled and whispered. The breeze hit my face next, fanning its fall breath over my heated cheeks and trying to cool me off.
It didn’t work.
“You didn’t hear everything she said to me.” I laughed; a real bitter sound. “She said that Dominic and I were falling in love.”
I spit the word out there like it was the nastiest thing I’d ever tasted. I still felt it on my tongue even after it left. It was a lingering ghost, a nightmare that wouldn’t fade away. I pressed my hand around my throat, rubbing the sides where the word had touched and feeling my fingers twitch with the desire to squeeze.
The girls both jumped off of their swings, Maya sticking her landing and Charlotte taking a small tumble but popping right back up with a squeal. They raced to the slides, climbing up ladders to reach the jungle gym’s landing.
Layla hadn’t said anything yet, but I could feel the force of her stare pushing against the side of my face. Half out of spite, half out of zero self-control, I snapped back to her, my sharp tongue ready to fight.
“What?” I hissed.
She didn’t flinch at my tone. In fact, I didn’t think anything could crack the granite exterior she’d molded around herself as she looked at me. She was so serious, more than I’d ever seen her.
Her question was carefully spoken though. “Are you?”
My response was not so much careful as it was swift and pissed off.
“No.”
I jerked away from her again, distracting myself by watching the girls instead of thinking about her question. A question that never should have come out of her mouth. First his mom, and now Layla? Just how many people were going to attack me with something that wasn’t true while emboldening the sickness?
It was already worse than it’d ever been these last few days. Stronger.
I didn’t need anyone else feeding it and nourishing it with the crazy notion that it just might win.
Next to me on the bench, Layla shifted closer. Her vanilla scent overtook the fresh air and her hand came to my back, her nails running lines up and down.
“Kit Kat. You’re freaking out.”
Not paying her a glance, I mumbled. “I’m fine.”
“You’re picking at your lips.”
My fingers froze mid pull. Dammit, she was right. Damn near growling, I fisted my hand and shoved it into the crook of my arm where my mother’s nasty habits couldn’t reach me.
“What has he had to say about it?” she asked gently.
“I don’t know,” I replied like a child. Like a peevish, bratty child. Immaturity was not a good color on me.
“How don’t you know? You’ve been living in the same house for four days now.”
I folded my arms over my chest, crossing my legs too. “Because I’ve been staying away from him like we agreed.”
“Has he tried texting you?”
“Yeah.” I half scoffed, half laughed. “And how much do you wanna bet his wife checks his text history?”
It had been a miserable last three days in that house. My options of people to run into in was like a freaking Sophie’s Choice. There were no ideal candidates. I was either dealing with Heather hovering over my shoulder, throwing me icy looks and jabbing comments under her breath, or Meredith showering me in kindness that I didn’t fucking get or deserve.
As for Dominic…
Running from him, hiding from him, and ignoring him had been the worst of all.
Any room we found ourselves in together, I made myself scarce as soon as I was able. We hadn’t exchanged more than a few sentences over the three days, but it wasn’t for lack of trying on his part. He was always trying to catch my eye across the room, find reasons to talk to me, or send me messages asking to meet.
I only replied when I needed to, and it was mostly to tell him to delete our text history in case Heather went through it. Which—it was Heather. Chances were pretty up there that she snooped through his phone.
Dominic could tell something was wrong. It was in the way he looked at me and the near desperation he’d stoop to during our occasional text conversations. Each time he begged to see me, I felt worse. Each time I denied him, I felt like dying.
But that feeling of death was just more proof that what I was doing was right.
“Kat.”
All the hair on my arms stood at the way Layla said my name. The air prickled with intensity at the same time it turned to dust on my tongue. I stopped breathing right as she spoke.
“It’s okay if you love him.”
Panic erupted so fast, it left me breathless.
I wasn’t even sure how I got my next words out with such force and malice. “I don’t, and we’re not talking about this.”
Layla pushed a sigh, and her hand vanished from my back. It appeared around my knee next, forcing me to twist towards her. Her Hulk-like strength plucked my surprise like it always did, yanking me around on the bench so she could level me with seriousness as piercing as the sun above her.
“Listen, I know why you’re scared to be that vulnerable with someone or to care about someone like that, but… I don’t think you have much of a choice.”
Insult narrowed my eyes to slits. “Excuse me?”
“I don’t think you have a choice.” Something akin to astonishment lit behind her eyes. She tried to ease the blow gently. “I- I think it’s done.”
My upper lip curled back, and I fucking dared her to say it. “Meaning?”
She waited for one profound beat.
Everything in the world stopped to hear it.
Everything in my world imploded when she ended it.
“I think you already love him,” she stated. Yes, stated. “Or you’re at least falling for him.”
It was at that exact moment that I learned you could feel so much that you felt nothing. Back in the hotel room with Dominic, I remembered feeling so much that everything inside of me burned, and I thought that was the worst.
Except I was wrong. This was the worst. This immediate explosion of every horrible, anxious, searing, blood-curdling feeling I’d ever felt hitting at the exact same time that it created a pain so intense, so unbearable, so unsurvivable, my body just quit.
It went from one extreme to the next so fast, my soul had whiplash.
I was left working on autopilot, saying and doing the things Kat Sanders would normally say when faced with the reality of love.
“You can’t be serious.”
Denial.
“I am.” She nodded, sending a cross glance down my front. “I think that’s why you’re so snippy right now. You know it’s true too.”
“I don’t know it’s true,” I spat but could hear tired syllables in my fight. I jutted my shoulders back, trying to force the venom. “I don’t even know him really. I’ve known him, for what, three months? Do you really think that’s enough time to fall in love with someone?”
“I don’t think time has anything to do with it.”
And again, she sounded so certain. I looked at my best friend like I’d never seen her before. Like she’d never seen me and had no idea the person or scarred heart she was dealing with.
“Okay fine,” I conceded in spite instead of earnest. “Fine, let’s play by your rules and say it is enough time to lose yourself that completely to another person. Even if three months was enough time, I wouldn’t know how to love someone like that. Loving my sister and you are different. That’s an easy kind of love, but there’s nothing easy about romantic love. It’s brutal and impossible to describe, and if I can’t describe it, then I highly doubt I’ve fallen into it.”
“You don’t have to define love to experience it,” she pushed back. “Love isn’t a definition. It’s a feeling. It’s what you’re feeling.”
“The fuck it is,” I countered, wrenching myself off the bench. My feet stumbled, but I managed to keep myself standing if purely by adrenaline alone. A gust of wind whipped at my hair just as I whipped to face Layla, sending power through its breeze.
“I mean it very seriously when I say that I have never and will never fall in love, and you’re starting to piss me off accusing me of being that stupid.”
“Fine. Get pissed off.” She ushered her hand out to me flippantly, throwing an arm over the back of the bench. “I don’t care.”
I ripped my mouth apart, tongue ready to spar when she cut me off. “And it’s not stupid. Your parents gave you a really shitty example of love, but that’s not how all love stories go, Kat. Some people get that end-all be-all, happily ever after.”
“Yeah, well those people don’t have a sister to look after who depends on them to be sane and present.”
She scoffed a laugh, sending it high into the air. “You talk about love like it’s this mind-eating disease.”
“It is.”
“It’s not.”
She let her head fall back with another soft laugh, blinking up at the wispy clouds brush-stroking a blue sky. Her lashes were so lush, they looked like onyx butterflies flapping over her eyes from where I was standing. I’d always been kind of jealous of them.
A ponderous sigh brought her gaze back to me, a glint of inspiration dotting both eyes. “I know I’ve never been in love either, but unlike yours, my parents gave me a pretty stellar example of it. Love can be amazing if it’s with the right person.”
I sunk my stare to the Earth, digging my toes into soft ground and watching the grass break around my black sneaker. The right person, huh?
“Well…” My teeth nabbed onto the inside of my cheek, chewing my voice away to a mumble. “All the signs in the universe point to Dominic not being the right person.”
Our timing was all off. I was being hunted by someone my mom pissed off, and he would be in legal battles and shit for who knows how long. Our goals didn’t align either. He wanted commitment, and I wanted nothing to do with a serious relationship.
Tan ankle boots met my shoes in the grass. A hand cupped my elbow, Layla’s touch guiding my stare back up to her.
“You don’t even believe that when you say it.”
My lips parted to argue… but nothing came out.
I grit my teeth against the nothingness, grinding them hard enough they could have chiseled down to dust. This wasn’t right. He wasn’t right. Everything pointed to us being wrong for each other except my heart, but it was disillusioned by the sickness, and I couldn’t trust it.
Dominic and I weren’t falling in love, and we weren’t right for each other.
I’d repeat that mantra again and again until it was ingrained in the grooves of my brain and as true as anything else I’d told myself. For now, I couldn’t deny her accusations with enough gusto, so I’d run from them instead.
“I don’t wanna talk about this anymore.”
Layla inhaled a hefty breath through her nose, staring at me tightly as she pinched her mouth to the side. She let the breath out by saying, “Fine. We can drop it for now. Just—”
Her fingers dented into my arm, holding my focus and overwhelming my heart.
“You deserve some good in your life, babe. You actually deserve a lot of good in it. Don’t run from it when it’s right in front of you.”
