He waited, somehow anticipating her next words, and as the seconds passed, dread started to replace the anger.
Tears fell down her cheeks.
“It’s the only way I know how to… to stop the anger before it becomes more.”
Something he thought long buried and forgotten broke inside him.
Kieran took another step away from her, unable to meet her eyes.
He knew. He had noted the signs. He was stretched too thin, the events of a day he couldn’t shake, and entering this room when it did nothing but throw his failures and loss back in his face, and then Sera. The idea of her betrayal had been painful and it manifested as anger. She had kissed him because she was terrified of what he might do if she didn’t. That wrongness he had sensed, it was as much her duress as it was this cursed room. Duress thathehad caused.
“Kieran?” She asked. The tears stopped, but her cheeks still glistened where her rushed, hard swipes to brush them away had missed.
He shook his head, running his fingers through his hair, upturning the already disordered strands into tangles.
After a moment he straightened and let out a deep breath. His words were clipped, mechanical. Showed nothing of the utter chaos in his head. “I apologize for my behavior. I… it has been a particularly long night and this room holds painful memories for me—”
“Oh shit, I didn’t reali—”
“I was not in my right mind. If I caused you any distress, I sincerely apologize.”
Sera shook her head. “No, I wasn’t. I mean, I was, but I—”
He flinched. He held up a hand to stop her. “I am in the wrong. There is no need to assuage my guilt.”
She pressed closer, advancing and he retreated another step. “But, I was the one snooping around your house. I can only imagine how pissed I’d be if I were you… I shouldn’t have kissed you, it was instinct.”
He took another step toward the door. “Don’t.”
“Kieran, wait. I know you like to blame yourself for everything, but this was—”
He backed into a chair, nearly tripping as he moved it from his path without taking his eyes off her. The ghost of his wrongs. The manifestation of his guilt. His wild gaze began to flicker around the room, slapping him with memory after memory. He reached behind him, desperately grasping for the door.
“Kieran, you’re not listening.”
He found it, nearly out breath. He put his arms behind his back and bowed. “Good night.”
And he fled. Like a coward.
Running from her. Running from the jumbled, chaotic emotions.
Running from the kiss unfairly taken.
Sera shut herself in her room and leaned into the door. The heat inside ignited her already flushed skin as her back sagged against solid wood.
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
She should never have gone snooping. Good intentions hadn’t made a difference. Not when she had panicked. Sera was used to finding her own solutions. Finding the Whatever Charm would have appeased Cole enough that he would—probably—no longerwish her dead and—a weak maybe—honor his deal of releasing her. It also might have stopped Kieran from seeking out Wraith. She owed him enough as it stood, adding in his potential ruin via Crime Boss was not a debt she could easily repay.
When she couldn’t sleep, Sera thought to try and find her own solution and hadn’t bothered to confide in Kieran.
Stupid.
If he thought the worst of her now, she couldn’t blame him. Kieran had offered protection, his home, taken in Seth without hesitation, seeing her snooping throughanotherroom—no, not just any room, but the Trauma Room, of all places—she could understand his anger. Anger enough that Mr. Perfect had looked… disheveled. His eyes had seethed with unsuppressed rage and so many other emotions at once that she doubted she could have deciphered them all with her mind fully present, impossible under the circumstances.
He offers her nothing but kindness and then she appears to be stealing from him to appease the monster he tried to save her from?
Stupid.
