“That day at the airport?—”
“The day we met?”
I cleared my throat. “I’m the reason your flights were upgraded to first class.”
Her lips formed an ‘O.’
“The hospital… the day I left and you came in… I lied about not remembering you. I’m sorry,duci.I should have been honest with you?—”
“Why weren’t you?” she sputtered. “You made me feel like a real dick at the airport.”
“I know. I was mad at you.”
“Mad atme?”
“When I paid to upgrade your flight, I found out your already unsafe trip to Key West was a lie. You intended on traveling to Mexico instead, which was infinitely worse considering the current lay of the land there.”
“Oh.” She scrunched her nose—fuck,adorable.“Right.”
At least, she didn’t argue about how bad an idea visiting Cancún was.
“For weeks, I couldn’t get the sight of you out of my mind. I felt certain you were an angel.” When her eyes bugged in bewilderment, I persisted, “Fucked up, I know. But…
“Cristu, when you were standing in the doorway of my hospital room, you had this halo at the back of your head, and you were suddenly all I could see.” She blushed but, thank God, didn’t run screaming for the hills. Taking it as a good sign, I cupped her chin then slid my fingers back to take the weight of her skull. “All I wanted to see. All I could think about.
“Without knowing it, you pushed me to recover, to jump through all the hoops the doctors insisted on, because then, I promised myself I’d find out who you were.”
“You had me investigated?” Her voice was so soft I barely heard it over the traffic rushing past us.
“Sort of?—”
“You orchestrated the whole thing! You son of a bitch, that’s why I’m wearing this damn ring.”
“Se.” Her nostrils flared, but I grabbed her right hand as she tried to pull it off her finger. “Everything up to the seats beingtogether, I manufactured. The rest wasn’t. The chemistry,our link—” I unapologetically used her words against her. “—that was us.”
“Stalker,” she accused with a blacker scowl.
“Only for you,” I said with a wince, relieved she was only grumbling and not slapping me across the face.
That earned me a shove in the shoulder. “Jerk.”
“Infinitely,” I agreed. “What can I say? It runs in the family.”
Regret filled me. Not for my actions, not when they’d brought us together, but for confessing my sins to her?—
No.
No.
I’d had to do this.
She deserved to know the measure of the man who’d claimed her.
And fuck, did she make me wait for salvationorruination.
Kitty studied me for so long, and with such silence, that my earlier relief seemed unfounded. I’d fucked up so many things with her, so I felt sure that thishadto be the tipping point. And as I vowed I’d do whatever she bade of me, that I’d let her scramble off my lap and jump out, that I’d let her go, she surprised me.
“Where is Evangeline buried?”
