When he came back to his empty house, he stared at the front room. He’d grown used to the little touches Kira left behind. Her books on the coffee table. Her shoes by the door. It looked so hollow and empty without her.
The next morning, when he went to make coffee, he found her favorite mug at the front of the cupboard and decided to go get breakfast at the café instead.
He spent the day out again, and that night, he went to his parents’ house instead of his own. They didn’t ask, only welcomed him in and talked about their renovation plans. They were always renovating something. It felt almost normal. Until it was time to go home, and he returned once more to the cold, empty house. Only this time, he forced himself to sit in Kira’s favorite chair.
She had left a DVD of her favorite series in the DVD player. It popped up as soon as he turned on the TV.
He didn’t sleep that night. Every sound in the creaking old house made him think about how she’d pad to the bathroom in the morning, her hair mussed, her eyes heavy with sleep. The way she grunted at him if she hadn’t had her coffee yet, only to turn into a completely different person as soon as she smelled it.
Dammit! He’d gotten so used to having her in his life. It was impossible to adjust to her absence. He’d sworn to himself that he wasn’t going to push, for fear of pushing her away, but the silence felt like a different sort of pushing her away. He snatched up his phone and sent her a message.
Can I come by and talk?
The three dots that indicated she was writing lit up, faded, and lit up again.Tomorrow at ten?
Relief washed through him.I’ll be there. Thank you.
He waited for a response, but none came, despite several more of those dots appearing and disappearing. No matter. She had agreed to see him. And he only had… Fourteen hours to wait and worry about how it would go. He let out a heavy breath.
Please help me not to screw this up, he prayed.
***
“These are for you,” Joshua said, handing Kira the prettiest bouquet he’d been able to find this morning. They were a generic bunch of flowers, given the short notice, but they were still nice to look at.
Kira accepted the flowers, but her expression was troubled as she turned them in her hands.
Joshua took a deep breath. “You know that I’m an asshole. There’s a reason for that, even though therapists have tried to help.”
“Oh. That’s not where I thought you were going to start.” Kira chewed her lip, then stepped back. “Come in. Chelsey went with Gwen and Rafael to bully the council into giving up all books that contain information on witch hunters.”
It raised his hopes to hear that. Maybe she was still looking for a solution? He tried not to latch onto it. They’d talked before about this incessant push and pull between them. The cycle had to break, one way or another. And until he could change his own patterns, he wasn’t going to think Kira would just spontaneously forgive him.
“Did she find anything?” he asked cautiously.
“Not yet. There’s a lot of books to sort through, and we don’t really know where to look. I’m hoping that the Elders have more information that they’re holding out on.” She paused and looked over her shoulder. “Not that it will change anything between us if we do find information.”
He followed her inside to the living room. Kira put the flowers on the coffee table. She spent some time arranging them before she turned toward him.
“So you’re an asshole?” she prompted.
Joshua shifted in his seat, hoping that his words would come out right. “I am. I’ve gone to therapy, but whenever I… I start feeling too deeply, I put up walls. It’s difficult for me to express myself. I don’t mean to be an asshole, but I am one. And I make mistakes all the time. Things get stuck in my head, and I can’t see other ways of doing them. I’ve nearly ruined my friendship with Rafael more than once because of it.”
Kira hugged herself and nodded to show she was listening.
“The first time we slept together, I rejected you because I was panicking. I was young, immature, and I thought I was going to kill you.” The words tasted bitter on his tongue. His wolf growled lightly, as though the admission was a threat. “I thought that my witch hunter blood would infect you and you’d die because I wasn’t strong enough to stay away from you. I thought I was being selfless by rejecting you. I see now that I was just putting the onus on you without even telling you. And I made the same mistake when I didn’t tell you the truth about why I can’t give you children.”
Kira leaned back, blinking rapidly. “Do you understand why it hurts so much?”
“Because I lied.” It was the wrong thing to see. Her eyes shuttered, and she leaned her head back, as though she was disappointed but not surprised.
Fuck, it hurt.
“Tell me,” he begged.
“I already have. But if you didn’t hear it… I can’t trust you to listen to me. Not about this, not about other things.” She grabbed the flowers and handed them back to him. “I don’t want gifts. I want you to listen to me.”
His instinct was to say she wasn’t telling him anything, but he bit it back. He did have a tendency not to listen. He knew that about himself. So he’d listen now. She was telling him to do more self-reflection. Right?
