Or if he’s just being the same as he’s always been, and the only gigantic gaping problem in this is me.
Of course you’re the problem. You always are.
I swallow a sigh and try to shut off the nasty negativity my brain is so good at when my mood tanks. It’s repetitive and boring. Nonsensical to anyone who doesn’t understand.
But it’s how I am.
It’swhoI am, and I have a river of misunderstandings and miscommunication behind me to prove it.
You don’t need to prove anything. Kai listens. He already knows you didn’t mean to be a twat earlier.
But his silence gets to me. He turns the bike he rode here in the direction of home, but I don’t want to go.
Not yet.
“Is your shed house thing close by?”
He startles a little, lost in thought, which makes me feel worse. “My shed house thing? That’s a mouthful.”
Kai doesn’t really make dirty jokes, but he hears the innuendo before me and a flush hits his neck. His glorious fucking neck. I want to press my face into his skin and inhale every drop of him. Soak in it, like a bear in a fucking dust bath. But I hold my ground. The paralyzing funk I brought home from my day with Jax is starting to shift, but it leaves behind a reality I can’t hide from. That I fucked this up the moment I kissed him instead of having a simple conversation. That I stole feelings he could’ve had for someone else if being attracted to me had lit a different flame.
It’s a twisted way of looking at it, I know, but I don’t deserve how he’s looking at me. How his shy and hesitant grin is making his beautiful eyes crinkle at the corners. I’mleaving, and neither one of us signed up for a broken heart.
“Um.” I try and pull myself back into the conversation I started. “Your house. Sorry. Yourhouse. Is it nearby?”
Kai swings a muscled leg over his bike. “Twenty-minutes, give or take. Why?”
I have nothing but a shrug. “I wanna see. Got time to show me?”
Kai’s confused, but agreeable. We walk our bikes to the dirt roads. Then cycle to the place where we parked the truck that time.That very first time that we kissed. It wasn’t that long ago but feels like a different era. One where my thoughts weren’t loud, and my conscience was stupid. I’m searching hard for regret among the burning guilt, but it evades me. Also, I’m distracted, again, by Kai’s fit body as he propels the push bike.
It’s a warm night. Sweat dampens his shirt and his muscles bunch. I’m trying to be good, I really am, but he’s fuckingbewitching.
Kai skids to a stop and leaps elegantly from his bike. He leans it against a tree and reaches to take mine.
I hand it over, then we face off, staring at each other under the bright, starry sky above, a wide expanse of clarity that isnothinglike Dunstable Downs, let me tell you. “I’m sorry I was a dick earlier.”
Kai considers me, propping a shoulder on a different tree, one with low hanging branches that cast shadows on his face. “That’s okay.”
“No, it’s not.”
“Says who?”
“Says me. I don’t get a free pass because I’m wired different.”
Kai opens his mouth. Closes it. Stands up straighter and threads his arms across his chest. “So…you think that means you have to apologize when things happen that you can’t control?
“I have to apologize when something I do or say fucks with someone else. Doesn’t matter if I did it on purpose or not.”
He doesn’t agree, I can tell, but he doesn’t have to. We are what we are.
“Anyway,” I flounder on when he doesn’t speak, already scrabbling for coherency. “I’m sorry. You didn’t deserve that. You don’t deserve any of it.”
“Any of what?”
I wave one arm. The other joins in of its own accord before I catch them both and drive the heels of hands into my eyes with a groan. “Fuck.”
Kai obliterates the distance between us. He grips my shoulders tight, warm and strong fingers digging into my flesh. “It’s okay.”
