Chapter 20
KEATS
Ididn’t expect to kiss her, but she welcomed it by gripping her fingers into my shirt and pulling me to her.
Her lips mold to mine, and a moan escapes her as she kisses me back.
I move in, my body pressed to hers against the counter, and caress her cheeks while my fingers dip into the sides of her silky hair.
I pull back, leaving my forehead against hers. My breathing is as erratic as I feel inside. She drives me wild. Always has. With my eyes closed, I kiss her temple and lean back to look into those hazel eyes again. “I want you so badly.”
Her hands slide up to my wrists as if she needs something stable to hold on to. Gripping them, she whispers through jagged breaths, “I do, too, but—”
“It’s not the right time. I know. I just—”
“I know.” She nods, her lids dipping closed as if she aches for me as I do for her. “I feel the same.”
I hate doing it, but I take a step back, shoving my hands in my pockets, and give her space. It’s torture being this close to her again without taking it a step further. I’m just not sure what tomorrow brings with so much unresolved still hanging over our heads, taunting us.
She brushes her hair out of her face, the length so much longer than I’ve seen it. Strands puff in front of her face when she blows out in annoyance. “Do you have a hair tie or rubber band, or something that I can tie my hair back with?”
“Um . . .” I glance around, but nothing triggers an idea in the kitchen. I open a few drawers to look before I say, “I have a paperclip?”
“Can I ruin it?”
I drop the paperclip when another idea comes to mind. “How about a shoelace?”
She smiles so damn prettily that I might have to restart my heart. “A shoelace works.”
Rushing toward my bedroom, I say, “I’ll be right back.” In my closet, I look for the cleanest pair of shoes I own. No way am I giving her a dirty shoelace to put in her hair. I pull my nicest Italian shoes from the shelf. It’s a pair I only wear on special occasions and undo the lace.
When I walk out of the closet, I stop when I see Sosie standing in the doorway.
Her eyes travel from the small tree on my nightstand to me in the opposite corner.
“So this is where you keep your secret stash of holiday decor.” Her smirk holds hints like she knew I was a closeted Christmas lover, to signs that she loves being let in on the secret of where I hide my decorations.
“Hiding them in the bedroom so only you get to enjoy it.” She crosses the room but glances at me.
“Unless you have it in here for when you have company.” Her grin falters before she sets it right.
“I don’t have company.”
Reaching the end of the bed, she stops and looks back. “Like ever?”
“Never.”
The smirk defining her earlier expression fades into sincerity. “Neither do I.”
Although she seems to be satisfied with the tidbit of information, I can’t help but wonder if she’ll be upset once she sees that tree up close. She moves in, and I follow, keeping some distance in case . . . I don’t know what in case of. I just give her some space.
She bends down and taps one earring and then the other before running her finger along the strand of gemstones. Looking back over her shoulder, she’s still smiling, and it’s grown. That’s a good sign. “You still have the tree.”
“It never came down. Though I must admit, I reworked the electrical system two years ago.”
Turning around, she comes to me, taking the shoelace from my fingers and slipping it under her hair. “I missed those earrings. They’re quirky.”
“They’re yours. If you want them.”
“I think they look better on the tree.” Gathering the laces together, she ties a bow in her hair, leaving it to hang down behind her back.
“I honestly forgot about the diamonds.” She laughs.
“My parents gave me the same necklace two years in a row. Guess they forgot to tell their shopper to update the list.”
I’m not surprised her parents sent a stranger to shop for her Christmas gift. It’s the “diamonds” that stand out. “When you say diamonds, you just mean because they look like it, right?”
“No.” With a heartier laugh, she touches my cheek. “That’s not what I mean.” She peeks back once more at the necklace draped around the top of the plastic tree, and then says, “That necklace is worth a good amount of money. It’s real, alright.”
Not sure why my stomach drops from the thought.
Maybe because there were nights I couldn’t afford more than a cup of soup or that damn pasta with no butter or sauce.
To learn that I could have bought a car for what that necklace is worth makes me kind of sick.
Not that I need a car in New York, but damn.
“It never crossed my mind.” I look at it shimmering against the little lights, feeling a bit stupid. “I guess I should have known.”
Taking my hand between hers, she draws on my palm with her fingertip. “Would you still have it if you had known?”
“Not if I were smart.” I crack a smile and then nod when she looks up. “Probably. I mean, I needed something to make my tree sparkle. And since you weren’t here . . .”
“I wish I had been.” Lowering my hand, I sit on the edge of the mattress, still holding it. “You don’t know how much I’ve wished things could have been different.”
Standing there, I’m tempted to pull my hand away, get defensive, and scrape my fingers through my hair.
I don’t. I have to face the pain, especially if she’s willing to address it.
“You didn’t need to make wishes, Sosie. I was there, begging you like an idiot in front of your house and neighbors to come out, to fight for me.
I would have burned the world down protecting you from your parents. I wasn’t given the chance.”
“Me either, Keats.” She stands in front of me, staring up like I’m the judge and jury. “You must believe me. Our night together was everything to me.”
I can’t hold on or back any longer. I walk backward in this bedroom that has more space than I’ll ever need for just me.
“I was never enough my whole life, but for one night, I felt like somebody because I was with Sosie Stansbury. Not because I gave a fuck about your last name or gave a shit about Manhattan society. I didn’t even know that was a thing until I worked catering. ”
She stands next to the bed, barefoot and in a pretty dress that shines when it catches the light, staring at me like she knew this was always going to happen. “I don’t want to fight with you, Keats.”
“I don’t want to fight with you either, but I need to know why you didn’t fight for me.”
I tug at my hair, trying so hard not to attack her for the pain I’ve lived with for so long. Too long. But I can’t. “This has been years in the making. It’s now or never.”
“We could say the same for us.” Her voice is a mere whisp of its normal volume, but the words hit hard. “Are we willing to take that risk?”
It is a risk. I don’t want to lose her, but I don’t want to feel so empty inside anymore, either. “I guess I’ve kept this bottled up for too long to shove it back down and cork the top again.”
“Fine, let’s get it all out in the open. I can take it.”
“You’re not going to fucking take it. You’re going to fight back, Sosie. You’re going to tell me whatever it is that you need to say, so when we walk back out that door, the slate is clean.”
“Is it?” She takes a few steps, but there’s hesitancy built into them. “Can it ever be?”
“Yes, because I need it to be. I need to know that this wasn’t all in my fucking head.”
Her silence has my mind filling in the blanks of what she’s thinking when all I want to hear is her saying it. She finally raises her chin and looks me in the eyes. “It wasn’t in your head. It was in our hearts. We both felt it.”
“Then what happened?” If we don’t get everything off our chests, I’m afraid we’ll live with too many regrets to fix.
She sits on the edge of the bed, looking so small in the center of that huge mattress.
With her gaze on mine, I say, “Please tell me because I’ve run through a million scenarios of why you walked away after the night we had.
None of them were kind to me, and I’ve had to live with that for six years.
Please put me out of my misery and tell me what I did wrong. ”
“It wasn’t you.” I catch the chin wobble and the glassiness of her eyes when she replies, “I can handle Gregory or ignore my parents’ rules without a second thought. Those don’t affect me, Keats.” I lose her gaze to the floor. “I don’t want to cry.”
My heart is held in the palm of her hands.
I just don’t think she realizes how she affects me yet.
Her pain is mine. I feel it when she’s with me and removes the mask she wears too often for everyone else.
“It’s okay.” I go to her and kneel in front of her.
“You have to be strong with them. You don’t have to be with me. You can cry if you need to.”
“I’m sorry for hurting you. Just know that I had no choice because I would never willingly cause you pain.”
“But you did. You ghosted me. You were nowhere to be found as I stood at that gate, then under your window, realizing I had just lost the best thing in my life. A goodbye would have been the minimum, but an explanation is long overdue.”
She reaches out to caress my cheek. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Tell me why you’re giving back rings and wearing my coat. You’re crying over my deal being announced and looking at me right now like you’re afraid to lose me.”
“I am, because this time I know the devastation that accompanies the loss.”
I get up when it becomes too hard on me to hold her gaze and hide the accusations I’ve been dancing around to spare her feelings.
I move to the chair by the window, sitting forward with the energy to straighten my back.
“That night meant everything to me. You claim it was a loss, but I’ve been stuck in the purgatory where you abandoned me ever since. Why? Please tell me.”
She grips her hands together as she seems to be hoping for the best by the way the plea infiltrates her expression, shaping it by anchoring her brows at the ends. “It was the best night of my life. That’s why I’m here to see if it can be recaptured.”
Pinching the bridge of my nose, I exhale.
Everything she says is right, and I agree.
Deep down, I know I dragged her here for a reason.
Selfishly like her, I hoped for the best. That doesn’t fix what she did to me.
“You left me, Sosie.” The words don’t sound right, but still manage to drag shame and defeat to the surface.
“Not by choice. I swear to you.”
“Does it matter what you would have done? I would have taken the risk of losing everything I had worked for if you wanted me to. I would have done it because I was invincible for the first time in my life with you.” I stand, unable to remain in one place and pace the room.
“You made me see myself as a new person, as someone who mattered . . . and then treated me like none of it did, like I didn’t matter to you. ”
“You mattered, Keats. You mattered to me so much—”
“I bought this apartment to prove to the world that I was worthy.” I hate that I lost control of my voice by raising it. “I wasn’t enough for you to stay, to lower yourself to date the poor guy, a fucking server surviving off tips and scholarships.”
Rushing to me, she grabs my arm until I’m looking her in the eyes.
“I never saw you like that. Everything we had together was genuine.” Tears slide slowly down her cheeks.
“Please believe me.” Her shoulders wrack with the emotion she can’t hold back any longer.
“He knew the only way he could hurt me was by threatening you.”
“Who?”
“My father.”
I turn to face her, peeling her fingers from my forearm to hold her hands.
My mind is reeling as I process what she claimed.
The breakthrough lands, calming my tumultuous insides.
“What did he say to you?” It’s the first time I’ve seen fear in her eyes.
I cup her cheeks and bend down to eye level.
“It’s okay.” Her breathing jags as if she might be having a panic attack.
I bring her into the fold of my arms, holding her against my chest. Stroking the back of her head, I whisper, “You’re safe with me. Always.”
There’s so much left to say, but maybe it doesn’t need to be all at once. Her body rattles with the emotions she’s probably kept pent-up as much as I have. “Keats?”
“Yeah?”
“Can I stay the night?”