I’m going to marry that woman.That was the thought KC had. Only it wasn’t a thought, it was more like the voice of her actual ancient and immutable soul, speaking aloud the purest desire it had ever felt.
KC kicked her shoes off and started toward the bathroom.
“Why are you bleeding?” Yardley stood, her soft alarm and prettiness like another world from Gramercy in the alley.
“Bit it.”
“It looks like it hurts.”
It did hurt. It never stopped hurting. An uneasy silence filled the space between them.
“It’s fine.” KC hated this—the awkwardness where there used to be endless conversation. The anxious stomach ache she got every single time she tried to talk to Yardley now. “I’m going to grab a shower.”
Yardley’s gaze was fixed on KC’s knee. “Let me look at that first. It might have gravel. Sit down, and I’ll get something to clean it up.” She hustled out of the kitchen to the bathroom cabinet in the hall, leaving KC to hunch over in the warm seat of the chair Yardley had vacated.
Her hands were shaking.
They hadn’t been able to talk to each other since KC had spite-ordered the POD after finding out Yardley signed the lease on an apartment. When it got delivered, she’d watched Yardley’s blue eyes fill with tears that spilled over her blotchy cheeks while she stared at KC, not even wiping them away, and it became perfectly, horribly plain that they weren’t going to be “taking a break” or “taking time to find their way back to each other.”
It was over.
Yardley’s extensive travel, more and more extensive all the time, followed by KC’s overwork and lies—those were the first blows. But KC had taken apart the rest with her failure to act on the knowledge that Yardley desired and deserved more. More romance. More gestures. More confidence in their commitment.
It wasn’t that KC hadn’t wanted to, it was that she couldn’t. Shecouldn’ttalk to Yardley about forever when their past and present wasn’t the entire truth. And even if she had been able to,she couldn’t live with how much she couldn’t give this woman who deserved to have every single thing she wanted.
Yardley came back into the kitchen with a huge brown bottle of hydrogen peroxide and a bag of cotton balls. “Sit up straight.” She knelt down on the floor in front of KC. The placket on her robe fell away to reveal the soft, luminous skin of her throat and shoulder. When she looked up, her deep blue eyes were crinkling at the corners with concern that made KC’s chest feel tight. “It’s pretty deep, actually.”
“It’s but a flesh wou— Yikes!” KC jumped at the unexpected cold sting of a cotton ball soaked in antiseptic touching the scrape.
Yardley dabbed one more time and then—dreadful—leaned forward and softly blew on KC’s knee.
It completely stopped the pain. Mainly because of KC’s overwhelming and instant horniness.
She gripped her uninjured knee against the sudden impulse to grab Yardley’s wrist or to say something, anything, to tighten this unexpected thread of connection between them.
But what could she say? Nothing had changed. Yardley wasn’t even paying attention anymore. She’d stood up to stare out the window at the driveway, where the white hulk of the POD waited for the last boxes to be loaded in.
“I have to remember to call those guys back.” Her voice was flat.
The coffee maker beeped, loud in the quiet kitchen. KC’s knee hurt three times as much as it had before. She squeezed her hands into fists to stop the trembling, listening to the coffee maker hiss and gurgle.
Coffee. That was why Yardley had been sitting at the table. She hadn’t been waiting for KC. She’d been waiting on her coffee.
It was just a few minutes after six. KC had never known Yardley, when she was home, to get up before seven thirty. Certainly not when she had the day off. “You’re awake early,” she said, breaking the heavy silence.
Yardley tightened her robe. “I have a work thing.”
“I thought you had the rest of the week off.”
“I thought so, too, but my boss called. There’s paperwork we have to finish up for the mortgage brokerage in New York. Then, after, I’m meeting someone.” Yardley gave KC a small shrug.
KC didn’t permit herself to react, even though this—the small shrug, and the way Yardley held her mouth when she was doing the small shrug—was a blow. Not because she believed Yardley would be unfaithful even now, when there was nothing left to be faithful to, but because KC had heard her say this kind of thing too many times.
I’m meeting someone. I have a work thing. I’ll be late, I’m getting together with a friend in the city after.
Every time, it hurt a little more what Yardleydidn’tsay.
I wish I could stay home with you.
