He’s sitting on the edge of the bed, towel wrapped round his waist, head in his hands.
I slow.
“You okay?” I ask.
He snorts, rubbing his hands down over his face as his eyes meet mine.
“Are you serious? Am I okay?” He shakes his head. “No Kara, Lucy, Cookie, whatever fucking name you go by now, I’m not okay.”
My defences come up quicker than you can sayhello, my muscles tensing against his next hissy fit.
“What are you getting pissy at me for?”
“Because it’s your fault.”
I baulk at his statement, and something lances through my system, hot and uncomfortable.
“How is any of this my fucking fault?” I throw back, marching towards him as he storms across and meets me in the middle of the room.
His chest heaves in angry breaths, droplets of water from his shower cascading down his body, settling into the peppering of chest hair.
Okay, I shouldn’t be looking at his chest right now. Or how trim he is under his suits. Or the fact he’s only in a towel, the body heat coming from him heightening my senses. I also shouldn’t do what I did this morning and jump him instead of having a conversation.
Like a grown up.
“You’re the one who found yourself entangled with Luca fucking Knight,” I remind him.
“He’s a friend!” he shouts. “For the record!”
“He’s a criminal!” I shout back at the same intensity.
Okay, this is not what we should talk about. But let’s neither acknowledge what we really need to talk about and continue to skirt around the real issue here.
“So are you!”
I pull back as though he physically hit me. “Says the man who takes funding from the Covenant.”
He points at me, his finger coming aggressively into my face. “Not the fucking Covenant,” he seethes, teeth gritted. “Do not tarnish me with that brush. The money Luca gave me came through his legitimate businesses. Nothing to do with the Covenant.”
“Guilty by fucking association, Owen. You think the press will give two flying fucks when that piece of information comes out?”
“It won’t,” he replies cockily, “because, like I said, it’s legitimate. And let’s not beat around the bush here, Lucy.” He says my name with a bite in his voice. “This has nothing to dowith Luca Knight, and everything to do with the fact that I’ve become the people you blame for our shitty childhood.”
“Shut up,” I say, pushing at him, but his hands wrap around my wrist.
Anger pulses through my body like liquid lava. My heart crashes behind my rib cage, and he leans forward.
“You blame me. But it wasnotmy fault.”
“You left me. You fuckingleft me!” I scream in his face. “Of course it was your fault.”
Something strange happens then. Something that I’m not familiar with. Not when I’ve spent years upon years training to be a ghost.
Trained to compartmentalise, to bury the emotions.
So, when something splinters from my chest, pain along with years of pent-up emotion bursts to the surface. It leaves me breathless. I don’t know what to do with it.
My knees buckle and I sink to the floor. I’m having a weird fucking out-of-body experience, because it’s as though Kara has stayed upright, but Lucy has fallen.
