Chapter 8 #3
Kate was horrified. Admittedly the sample wasn’t very large but to her knowledge, none of the men she had slept with had ever guessed where her head was. But why would they? She’d never started with them in the place she had started with Connor.
Wanting this so much.
Wanting him.
‘I… don’t know what you mean.’
Connor was silent. And Kate felt ashamed of herself for lying to him.
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered.
Suddenly aware that she was lying there totally naked and exposed was horrible. Kate sat up, pulling her knees up so that she could wrap her arms around them. Connor seemed to simply melt out of the way, but Kate wasn’t watching anyway. She buried her face against her bare knees.
‘I thought I could do this,’ she said. ‘I thought it would work. I’m sorry, Connor.’
‘I don’t understand.’ His hand touched her back and Kate couldn’t help herself. She flinched.
The hand was withdrawn instantly and she heard Connor take in a slow breath. And then another one.
‘That boyfriend of yours,’ he said. ‘He didn’t just hit you, did he?’
Kate felt her breath escape in a kind of sob. ‘No.’
‘He raped you.’ Connor’s voice was as harsh as the word. ‘My God, Kate. How old were you?’
‘Fifteen. I… I wouldn’t have sex with him. I was too scared. And when he hit me I was even more frightened and I tried to run away and… and…’
And Kate wanted to cry but the tears that might have been a relief were locked away along with all the wonderful feelings that Connor’s touch had been able to give her.
Connor groaned. A desperately sad sound that only made Kate want to cry even more. ‘It was too soon, that’s all. You weren’t ready for this.’
Kate shook her head. ‘It won’t work.’
‘Don’t say that.’
Kate felt the bed move as Connor stood up. She watched him through the tangle of her lashes as he stood beside the bed for a long moment and then he surprised her by turning and dropping to his knees.
‘Kate, I don’t know what’s going on between us but it feels important. Important enough to be bigger than sex. We’ll sort this out. You wanted me to make love to you, didn’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘And it was good until…’
Until he’d touched her so intimately? Kate nodded.
‘So it can be good again.’
‘You don’t understand.’ Kate’s voice was weary. ‘The only way I’ve ever been able to have sex with anyone was to distance myself. Kind of like the way you do when you have to do an autopsy or something. I didn’t want to feel like that with you because…’
‘Because what, Katie?’ Connor’s voice was gentle.
‘Because I… care about you.’ This was bad enough, without revealing just how much she cared about him. That was a grief that would have to stay very private. ‘I thought it could be… I don’t know… real.’
Connor’s face looked grim now. He didn’t know what to say. Or maybe he simply wanted to escape. Kate had to look away. Still, Connor didn’t move. Did he need more of a reason? She could give him one.
‘It’s not just the sex that got screwed up for me,’ she said quietly. ‘There was a… a baby.’
She heard the sharp intake of his shocked breath.
‘Oh, my God,’ Connor breathed. ‘Did it…? Did you…?’
‘I lost it.’ Kate clamped her lips together hard. That was all she was prepared to say. All she could say right now, without tearing the rest of her heart out, and if she did that, how could she survive?
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, yet again. She made her tone final this time. She rolled away to the other side of the bed. ‘I’m going to the bathroom,’ she told him. ‘Maybe you should get dressed and go. You don’t have to stay. I know how awkward this is… for both of us.’
‘You don’t want me to stay?’ The query was almost expressionless. More of a statement than a question.
‘Best you don’t.’
Kate tried to swallow the lump in her throat but it wouldn’t go away.
This failure on her part was so huge it was mortifying.
Talking about it any more wouldn’t help.
Being naked with him was unbearable now, even though she was standing with her back to Connor and knew that her hair was enough of a shield.
She had tried. And failed. There was no going back from that. And there was no going forward either.
‘This isn’t going to work, Connor,’ she said. ‘Let’s just forget it.’
Rustling sounds from behind her suggested that Connor was collecting his clothing. Kate didn’t wait to see him get dressed or show him out of her house. She went into her en suite bathroom and closed the door behind her.
The French doors were closed and locked now.
The barbecue turned off, the uneaten food packed away in the fridge. The music had been silenced and the candles had been snuffed out, but Kate didn’t bother turning on any other lights.
She was sitting, curled up on one end of the couch, her back to an armrest and her knees drawn up so that she could hug them. Like the way she’d been sitting on the bed when she’d wanted to hide her nakedness.
She was fully clothed again now but she still felt naked. Exposed. Taken back to place she would never be able to escape from. The horror of being shouted at and ordered to do things that terrified her. The pain of that attack. The repercussions.
Locking it away had seemed to be the answer that had come to her with blinding inspiration that day she’d found the rusty old key in that junk shop.
How could it have occurred to a broken teenager that it would all come back to haunt her?
That it was an obstacle she would never get past no matter how badly she wanted to?
Well, she would just have to deal with it. Much safer to be alone and not risk the kind of pain that came from realising what she was missing out on.
What Connor could have given her.
What she could have given him.
Bella had hit the nail on the head when she’d said that Kate had a gap in her life. What she hadn’t been right about was saying that Kate didn’t know what it was. She knew exactly what it was.
That magic that was so much bigger than the simple addition of two parts.
The power and strength that was created by a shared love between two people who chose to share their lives intimately.
Kate was too miserable to notice that the kitten had climbed onto the couch and snuggled its way into the gap between her knees and her chest. She barely noticed the way she responded to the push of the little grey head by stroking it.
There was something comforting about the movement, though. Kate stroked the kitten from its head to where that ridiculous triangle of a miniature tail began. Again and again.
She could feel the softness of its fur. The tiny knobs of a spine. The rumble of the purr. The sensation filled her fingertips and travelled into her hands and up her arms. All the way to her heart, and Kate knew that Bella was right about something else, too.
She was falling in love with this kitten.
She could feel the pleasure of stroking it. Her nerve endings were hungry for it. And they weren’t going to get switched off by a mechanism Kate couldn’t control because she knew perfectly well that this touch was not threatening in any way.
And finally, the tears came. Years and years and years’ worth of tears.