Her eyes sparked. “She and Ezra assumed I broke up with you. They assumed Iwantedto move away, and you let them keep assuming. For nine years.”
His chin tucked into his chest. “I’m sorry.”
A burning-circuits scent began to crackle from her, so pungent and hot it hurt. “How could you let almost a decade go by and not set the record straight? Why didn’t I deserve better than that from you?” She dug her fingers into her hair. “Wow, I didn’t even know how mad I was about this.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Stop saying that.”
“I should’ve set them straight. I just couldn’t talk about you, after you left.”
She sprang to her feet and stood over him, hands on her hips. “That isnotwhat I did. I begged and sobbed. I threw myself at you, literally physically threw myself at you while sobbing.Thatis what I did, Trevor, and you pushed me off.”
“I know.”
The betrayal and pain had poured off her that night in such forceful waves, he’d been unable to breathe. He hadn’t only smelled her desperation. He’d been sure he felt it along with her, or maybe his own was just as deep and somehow their two selves blurred for a minute as their two heartbreaks happened together. And now it was happening again. Trevor couldn’t breathe while Kelsey’s body spewed its rage and hurt in words and in rancid scent that revealed how long she’d held these things inside.
“I moved away afteryouleft. You left me.”
“I know.”
“Stop saying that!”
He hid his face against his knees. He deserved every angry word. He deserved to be kicked out of Maggie’s house. His gut ached. His chest was on fire. Again. He didn’t know what he would say until he heard his own voice.
“I hoped you were happy somewhere. I hoped you were traveling the world with someone who made you happy.”
In the silence, the hot festering fury lifted a little from her scent. She was feeling so much so fast, he couldn’t process all of it, could only sit under the onslaught, but confusion was there now where only anger had been.
“Someone who made me happy?”
“Yeah,” he said. “You could…go places with him, like you always wanted. You could have an adventurous life, like you—like we—used to dream about. And he wouldn’t have to interrupt the adventure every month, run back to the paddock and put on a shock collar for the night so he didn’t eat anybody.”
The couch behind him shifted with her weight. She sat on the cushion beside him, her leg lightly pressed to his arm. “Tell me that’s not it.”
“It?”
“Tell me that’s not the reason you ended things.”
“You wanted to see everything and do everything. You were fearless, Kels. You were made for a big life, a life of epic quests, just like your mom and dad.”
Her palm skimmed the back of his head. She began playing with his hair, thumb stroking his neck, and a howl filled his body at the rightness of her touch. He tried to release it. With all his might, he tried. But he was too weak, even with Kelsey’s hand on him. He groaned as the burn of the lost howl rose in him, then faded away like all the others.
“You’re an idiot,” she said.
The flatness of her voice didn’t match the softness of her touch. Trevor lifted his head, and her hand fell away. She lowered herself from the couch to sit beside him on the floor, their arms touching, as if she needed the closeness too.
“You were the one who made me happy. In Raleigh there was never anybody else.”
“Never?”
Impossible. She was too beautiful and funny and brave and good not to be happy with…with some vanilla guy. He hated that image more than any other in the world, had battled it out of his head for nine years.
Kelsey said, “I dated around. Even got proposed to once. I thought about saying yes for him, not for me. But I couldn’t do it.”
“Kelsey.”
“Look, if it’s over just tell me, so I can focus on Maggie while I’m here. So I can try to re-categorize us once and for all. Friends, acquaintances, history, blah blah blah. If that’s what Arlo meant about you being honest, then…please just tell me.”
