“I didn’t want you getting me off when you’d just been in so much pain. I didn’t want you to feel like you owed me anything. You’re worth it all on your own.”
Tears blurred my vision. Fourteen-year-old me would have heard Guy’s words and been screaming and crying like I was front row at a One Direction concert. Eighteen-year-old me wasn’t buying it.
“Why would you think I don’t want you, Kitty?”
My next words were brittle. “I was practically begging you to let me touch you.”
“We were entering new territory. I didn’t want to rush after we spent years dancing around it, Kitty. I loved touching you.”
Silence rang through the car. The only sound was the grind of snow on the tires and the wind whipping by. I couldn’t fully comprehend what he was saying.
“Because you love women. I was just another woman,” I argued.
“No, it was because it was you, Kitty!” Guy burst out, staring at me. “What are you not getting here? Why is it so hard for you to believe that I want to be with you?”
“Because you’ve always hidden me away!” I shouted. “You’ve never been willing to say that I’m yours. I’ve always been your dirty little secret.”
Another tense silence crackled between us. Guy removed his hand from my thigh. “I’m sorry.”
The tears that had been threatening their arrival started to spill. My hands wobbled on the steering wheel. I sniffed. “I need to focus on the road.”
“Let me drive, Birdy,” he said. “Pull over.”
The roads had become so white that it was hard to see the lanes, much less where the shoulder might be. “I can’t see the side of the road,” I said, panic tinging my tone.
“Right,” Guy agreed, looking around. “Fuck, Kitty, look out!”
Guy barely got the sentence out before I had to swerve.
Chapter 16
Guy
Kitty’s arm clamped over my chest at the same time that mine clamped over hers. The human seatbelt is a funny instinct like that. Our car barely missed the jack-knifed truck, but went into a spin, sailing off the side of the road into a ditch. The car cameto a stop when the rear passenger bumper crashed into the guard rail, both of our heads jerking.
“Kitty, baby, are you okay?” I scrambled to reach for her, my body charged with adrenaline. She sat, staring ahead and shaking.
“Daddy’s gonna kill me,” she whispered.
“No, he’s not, sweetheart. He won’t. It was an accident.”
“Are you okay?” Kitty turned to me with wild eyes.
“I’m fine, baby.” That’s when I noticed the trickle of blood coming down the other side of her face. I see plenty of blood in hockey, but seeing it coming down my best friend’s face, sweet, innocent Kitty, almost made me throw up on the spot. “Kitty, baby, you’re bleeding.”
“We have to get the car out of the snow,” she said, cutting the wheel back and forth.
“No, baby. We need to go get help.” I couldn’t stop saying ‘baby.’ Seeing Kitty so vulnerable broke something inside me. She’d endured so much with me. She never cried in front of me about people calling her names. She never even mentioned it. She cried with me when Maman died. She cried because I’d hurt her recently. But with everything we’d seen together over the years, she didn’t break easily.
There was no way my door was opening, as it was lodged against the guard rail. “Open your door and we’ll both get out, okay?”
Kitty put her foot on the gas and pressed, snow flying everywhere. I put my hand on her arm.
“Kitty, I need you to listen to me. We can’t get out of the snow like that. We need to go get help for your head and check on that truck driver. My door won’t open, so I need you to open yours. Turn off the car and open your door, baby.”
She turned off the car but didn’t open her door. I stripped off my coat and took off my t-shirt, then put my coat back on and zipped it.
“Let me see your face, Kitty Bird.” Kitty still wasn’t crying, justshaking. I didn’t realize how bad I was shaking too until I went to zip up Kitty’s coat, then pressed the t-shirt to the cut on her head.
