Chapter 71 - Haven #2
That day, a shaft of yellow mid-afternoon sun pierced through the canopy of the maple tree and shone on his face, picking out golden highlights in his floppy hair.
Reflecting off a speck of gold I’d never noticed in one green eye.
An eye he squinted, which made his lip twitch, which suddenly made me aware that he had a mouth, and it was a mouth I wanted to kiss.
That I wanted to feel all over my thirteen-year-old body.
A mouth I wanted to hear whisper my name again, and again.
To hear him say, I love you, Heavenly. Now and forever.
I fell in love in an instant, and he spent every second after that crushing my heart.
So maybe I feel entitled to some answers.
Or maybe I’m just tipsy and I’ve repressed so much bad shit that it s spilling over.
“You could have fought for me, Kai.” I slap the glass again. “So why didn’t you, huh?”
His Adam’s apple bobs, jaw ticking a few times as he stares out at the deepening purple skies above the waves.
He murmurs something, but too low for me to hear.
“Why?” I snap, my breathing back to its frantic near-panting. I’m so ready for a fight, so ready to scrape the last of the soil off this corpse I buried so I can see just how putrid it is in its decay.
“Because I’m a fucking coward, Haven,” he whispers.
Cold shoots through my veins like my heart’s pumping ice water instead of blood.
It’s so fucking difficult to bite back the apology that wants to spill from my mouth, I’m shaking.
But I force myself to remain silent, because the pain I see on Kai’s face is a fraction—less than one fucking percent—of the agony I’ve had to endure these past years.
I’m not enjoying it. Not getting any kind of satisfaction.
Just relief.
Because maybe now he’ll understand what I’ve been going through.
But then it’s not enough, because I see relief on his face too, like that one pathetic admission is all it took to clear his guilty conscience.
It’s. Not. Fucking. Fair.
“That’s it?” I say sweetly. “That’s all you’ve got to say?”
His eyes don’t leave mine as he tips back his head and slowly drains the entire glass of wine. When he lowers it, it’s with resignation, like he wishes he could have drowned himself in it.
“What?” he scoffs. “Still surprised I can’t give you what you want?”
My breath catches. The wine-fueled haze, the anger, the years of buried pain…it all forms an acrid lump in my throat.
I want to shatter this glass against the wall, against his head, anything to make him feel what I feel.
“Do you even know what I want?” I push off the window, too wobbly to be graceful, but I don’t care. “Because if you think I want you to be some perfect, heroic asshole who’s done no wrong, you’re kidding yourself.”
“So what, then?” He looks away, then back, a flicker of something raw and desperate in his eyes. “Want me to say I’m sorry?”
“Yeah, Kai, that’s all I need.” I laugh, but it’s a raw and angry sound. “A neat little ‘sorry’ bow tied around this clusterfuck of a thing we’ve got going. That’ll make it all better.” My voice cracks on the last few words.
“I never stopped caring, Haven.”
“Sure got a funny way of showing it,” I rasp.
He drags a hand through his hair as he steps closer, green eyes dark and desperate. “Tell me what to do, and I’ll do it.”
“Wish I fucking knew,” I mutter. Angry at him, angry at myself, angry at the world.
Why the hell can’t I tell him what he wants to hear, so he can tell me what I need to hear so we can move onto the fairy tale part where the happy couple drives off into the sunset?
But nothing has ever been easy.
Why would this be any different?
He takes another cautious step. “I could kiss you.”
I should push him away, but when his smell envelops me and I catch the tiniest hint of sun-baked hair and sweat, I don’t want to stop him.
He must see something in my eyes, because he wraps his arm around the back of my neck, sloshing wine over my shoulder in the process, and drags me against him.
His head ducks down, but he murmurs, “You deserve better than me,” before pressing his lips to mine.
I hold myself stiff, refusing to let him seduce me into some kind of truce. But his warm lips are so confident, so insistent against mine, that I feel myself cracking under the pressure.
Then melting.
Then dripping.
God, he’s a good kisser.
A small moan escapes me as our bodies press against each other, and I can feel him hardening for me.
Me.
He wants me.
Me.
Except…maybe it’s not me at all. Maybe he’d kiss anyone this way.
The thought claws at me even as I lean into him. And worse—I can’t stop thinking about how easily Bastian makes me feel the same way, too. That man just has to look at me and I’m squirming. So maybe it’s not Kai either. Maybe this is just what kissing does to me.
I shove Kai away, my face heating a thousand degrees. He gives me a lusty smile, but when he registers my expression, his face goes slack.
“What—”
A hissing sizzle reaches us from the kitchen.
The spaghetti is boiling over.
Because of course the pasta chooses now to scream for attention. Even our fucking dinner knows this will never work.
“Go.”
He just stares at me, wine tilting at a dangerous angle from the glass he seems to have forgotten he’s holding. “Haven—”
“You wanna burn the spaghetti too?” I snap, furiously blinking back the tears waiting to spill.
He shakes his head, muttering something too low for me to hear as he turns on his heel and strides toward the kitchen.
I watch him go, feeling the last vestiges of my rage dissipate, replaced by a hollow ache that matches the sullen throb in my foot. We were so close. So fucking close to…something.
Then my beautiful, broken brain had to shove Bastian in there.
I’m my own worst enemy.
I walk back to the window, staring out at the ocean, now fully dark, the waves crashing relentlessly. The wine in my glass tastes like nothing, but I drain it anyway.
There’s a clang and a scrape as Kai cleans up the mess in the kitchen.
A few minutes later, he walks back holding a plate stacked with sandwiches. So that’s what he was doing when I heard the fridge open and close a hundred times.
“Dinner is served, m’lady,” he says dryly, one side of his mouth tilted up in a fake smile.
I lean past him and give the messy counter a hard stare. “I’m definitely not cleaning that.”
He shrugs. “I’m sure someone will take of it.”
Maybe he’s hoping someone else will clean the mess he made of my heart, because he sure as shit doesn’t seem capable.
I laugh hollowly.
He laughs too, and it sounds just as empty.
It’s obvious we’re both pretending that this is normal.
That this is fine.
That we’re not both still bleeding from the claw marks we left in each other’s hearts all those years ago.