She smiles, but it's not exactly happy. More like melancholy. "Because I'm your wife?"
I long to reach out, lift her chin with a fingertip. "Because you'reyou."
CHAPTER 32
Cecily
I was livid.
LIVID.
Until I heard what Dominic said to my dad. The way he defended me. Who in my life has ever done that? Nobody.
My anger melted away, leaving behind confusion and heaps of mortification. Little is worse than tipping up your head for a kiss, and receiving a childish nose nestle. It's like the participation trophy of kisses.Thanks for coming, now go away.
I did everything I could to put Dom out of my mind on the return trail ride. Spring in the desert is impossibly beautiful. Needle covered cacti make room for bursts of vibrant flowers, hot pinks and bright purples, vivid orange and lemony yellows. A sunrise represented by flowers.
No matter how hard I tried, I knew the warmth on my cheeks was from more than the midmorning sun. Dom and I are going to have to talk about what happened, even though I don't want to. If it were possible, I would simply ignore him for the next three weeks. Fake an illness. Cut off my ears. Almost anything to avoid the conversation I know we must have.
We arrive back at the dude ranch, and Quint hands everybody brushes. He shows us how to properly care for the horse after a ride. When that is done, Kerrigan asks Grandma if she would like to go for a walk in the meditation garden. Rainbow, everyone's favorite (but not really) interloper tags along.
Dom is looking at me with reluctance. When I incline my head away from the others, he nods, a silent agreement that his thoughts mirror mine.
"We'll be at the pool later," I tell the remaining members of my family, not that they care. Duke's fingers are itching to work. He's literally twitching, probably envisioning all the bossing around he needs to do.
Dom falls into step beside me. "Cecily?—"
"Not yet," I interrupt. "I'd like to be out of earshot of my family."
He nods. We arrive at our casita, and I tell him I'll only be a moment. "We're going for a hike," I say, switching out my boots for tennis shoes. I hand him one of the two water bottles housekeeping has left on our nightstands. "We shouldn't be gone long, but it's the desert."
"Better safe than sorry."
We set out, me in the lead. I'm trying to get a handle on the way I feel, but it's tough. Emotions are high and intense, and I'm starting to not know up from down. I went from hating Dom, to begrudgingly being apathetic about him, to wanting him to kiss me and feeling devastated when he didn't. Add to that the way I feel about my family and how much I love my grandmother, and it's a tsunami of chaos in my mind. My heart.
Dom, thankfully, stays quiet as we walk deeper into the desert. I like that about him, the way he is ok with not talking.
The sun rises higher, and the trail gradually becomes less manicured. Rockier. Large boulders accumulate at the base ofthe mountain, balanced on each other. We stop for water, Dom's eyes watching me even as he tips up his water bottle to his mouth.
"You ready to talk, Menace?" He wipes the back of his hand across his lower lip.
I twist the cap on my water, squaring my shoulders. "You said last night you were ok with chaste kisses. Has that changed?"
"Not at all."
"Then please help me understand that stupid nose thing you did." The mention of it has my body warming again.
Dom sets his water on the ground and takes a step closer to me. I'd take a step back, for the sole purpose of being petulant, but there's a boulder behind me. "I panicked," he admits.
I'd seen an emotion in his eyes when I tipped my face up, but I hadn't labeled it as panic. To me, it was horror. "I suppose the thought of kissing me is panic-inducing." Sarcasm as a salve isn't as soothing as I'd like it to be. Dom's rejection of me refuses to stop stinging.
He's only a couple feet away from me now. There's dust on his right thigh, as if he brushed his hand off on the fabric. "It wasn't about you," he says.
It is without a doubt one of the worst things I could hear.
It wasn't about you, Cecily. Today was about your sister. Today was about your brother. I missed your orchestra concert because I had to work late, it wasn't about you.
Nothing in my family was ever about me, no matter how hard I tried. Until I got older, and stopped trying.
