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She shut the door so hard it rattled in the track and spun her chair to face me. She looked pissed. The last time she’d turned a look like that on me was when I was helping her through painful therapy exercises during her recovery.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “You’ve just been pushing yourself hard lately. I didn’t mean to imply…”
I trailed off, realizing my words weren’t doing me any favors.
“Do you even believe what you’re saying, Kit?”
“Of course I—”
“Because if you believed that,” she carried on, talking over me, “then you wouldn’t have gone and talked to Felipe behind my back before I even called him!”
Oh, shit. Felipe had told her. I’d braced for this after the first date, but when nothing happened, I figured he’d decided to keep it to himself.
“I was just trying to protect you,” I said quietly.
“Yeah? And what if you’d scared him off with that bullshit? You could have ruined a good thing before it even started.”
“I just didn’t want you to waste your time with another guy who wasn’t in it for the right reasons.”
Her eyes flashed. “And I couldn’t possibly decide for myself whether Felipe was that kind of guy?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You might as well have,” she said. “I’m not helpless, Kit. I’m not a victim. I’m an adult.”
“I know that.”
She scoffed. “Sometimes, you seem like you do. Then you pull crap like this.” She shook her head. “As if you have any room to worry about my love life when you’re totally gone for Joey and can’t even admit it to yourself.”
“That’s not true.”
“Maybe I should go warn Joey not to waste his time with a guy like you, huh? If you’re not in it for the right reasons…”
I flinched. There was a little too much truth there. I’d known from the beginning that I wasn’t what Joey needed. I’d given him a chance to walk away, and he hadn’t, but I should have had stronger will power.
Dakota seemed to deflate, her anger sapping away. She sighed. “What am I going to do with you, huh?”
“Forgive me, I hope.”
Her smile was tired and a little sad. “You’re just lucky that Felipe is a good guy who didn’t run scared.”
“I know. He seems sincere.”
She studied me for a long minute. “He is. He’s a great guy. If things keep going this way, I could see this lasting. It might mean some changes around here.”
“What sort of changes?”
“I don’t know. I might not always need you to take care of me, Kit. You could be free.”
“I’m free now,” I argued.
“No, you’ve put your life on hold to be there for me. But it’s time you started living for yourself. You need to figure out what will make you happy.”
I opened my mouth to argue.
“I don’t mean sneaking around and having hookups,” she said before I could think of a response. “I mean, really happy. It’s time you and I stopped playing house, so we can both find love and build a real future with a partner.”
There wasn’t much more to say. Dakota went outside with Pogo, and I headed to work, still unsettled by the notion that Dakota might not need me anymore.
