Kendall #2
“I, uh… Well, I have kind of a date thing tonight,” he stammered out. “Well, no. Not really a date. I’m meeting some people. So I might need these. I don’t know. Maybe not.”
Blinking in slight confusion, I felt my eyebrows furrow together. “Well, safe sex is important,” I said. Why was his reaction to me seeing them so extreme? Sure, being caught buying condoms was a little awkward, but we were both adults.
“Yeah, I know,” he agreed. “The first thing I did when I found out about Hailey’s affair was get an STD test. Even though it’d been, like, over two years since we’d had sex at that point.”
My mouth dropped open slightly at his statement, but I quickly recovered and closed it, glad he was still looking away from me.
The idea of having Rhys as a husband, of legally owning his body and heart and devotion, and not having my legs around his waist at every possible opportunity was like a complex math formula my obsessed little brain just couldn’t compute.
“I have absolutely no idea why I just told you that,” he said, looking embarrassed. “Sorry.”
“I-it’s okay,” I assured him. “That sounds… really lonely. You deserve so much better. Seriously.”
He cleared his throat again, rubbing one of his defined biceps, his body language radiating nerves and discomfort.
“Yeah, well. I never fucking cheated. No matter how bad it got.”
The bitterness was so palpable, I could practically taste it as it poured off his tongue to infect the air between us. I wanted to crush his mouth to mine and suck it out of him along with all the rest of the pain and insecurities he had simmering in there.
“Of course you didn’t,” I said. “You’re not the kind of person that would be so careless with someone else’s feelings.”
He scoffed a little, before eyeing me with an expression I couldn’t exactly decode. He looked hesitant and… Shy?
Those were two traits I would have never thought to use in describing star quarterback and prom king Rhys Kensington.
He was intense and dynamic and competitive.
Like a living, breathing spark of energy.
He wasn’t perfect. He had flaws, like how broody he could get when he was in a bad mood, or how heavy his intense pessimism could feel if left unchecked.
But to me, Rhys was bright and brilliant and warm, like a beam of sunshine I could see all the dust motes floating in.
In theory, I knew what it would feel like to pass my hand through, but he would always be this ethereal, untouchable thing I could only admire with my eyes.
I could never really capture him in my hands.
“You think too highly of me.”
“No,” I denied, my pulse stumbling when his gaze darkened.
That deep, painful yearning I’d been feeling more and more since he’d come back bubbled up my throat for a moment before I ruthlessly swallowed it back down.
It wasn’t fair for me to put that on him.
It wasn’t his fault. “You just don’t know how other people see you.
You’re still like a legend around here, you know. ”
“Yeah, right,” he said flatly.
“I’m serious,” I insisted, and mostly because he looked so incredibly unhappy, I forced myself to inject a note of humor into my next statement to try and lighten the mood.
“Men still envy you. Women still swoon at the thought of you. You left a trail of shattered hearts in your wake when you left for uni.”
The tiniest ghost of a smile flirted around the corner of his handsome, sculpted mouth and I nearly sighed in relief.
“Yeah, well. Maybe back then,” he said. “I’m sure all you people who were swooning over me when I left didn’t imagine I’d actually end up like this.”
“You people?” I asked, snorting when he lightly groaned, covering his palms with his eyes.
“The girls, and… You. You get what I’m saying. Sorry. I wasn’t trying to be offensive.”
“No, you weren’t. I get what you’re saying.” Frankly, I was just happy to be included.
“Anyway,” he said. “People only admired me because they thought I was actually getting out of this fucking town and making something out of myself. Anyone who wanted to be with me back then was just imagining me as this amazing football star.”
“That’s not what I imagined,” I retorted, barely able to hold back my wince as I heard the words coming out. I was giving away too much of myself, but if now wasn’t the time, when he was feeling so low, then it would never be time.
“Yeah?” He asked. “You knew I’d end up a divorced, jobless loser living back with my parents?”
“You’re not a loser. You’re the guy who asks his brother what kind of perfume his sister-in-law is wearing so he can sound convincing when he compliments her on it, even though I know you hate the smell of roses.
You’re the guy who lets his mom win at Scrabble, even though you had the letters for a longer word, because you know it makes her happy when she wins that.
You pretended like you bought those unsalted nuts at the cabin by mistake, but I saw you feeding them to the squirrels all week.
You are an amazing, thoughtful, intense person with all these really fascinating layers, who shitty things have happened to.
But that doesn’t change or take away from who you are.
You’re Rhys fucking Kensington. That means something.
Even if you don’t feel like it does right now. ”
He stared at me for the span of several, silent heartbeats, the ambient noise of the grocery store fading out as the buzz in my head grew louder and louder. Goosebumps raised along my exposed skin, and I resisted the urge to rub at them or shiver.
“You’ve been watching me pretty close, Sparkles.” His voice was low and thick, a flush of color spreading up his neck to his face.
“So?” I tucked my thumbs into the belt loops of my tight jeans and shrugged, keeping my eyes locked right onto his beautiful blue ones. “Does that bother you?”
He swallowed hard enough to send his Adam’s apple bobbing, before shaking his head in a slow, minuscule movement.
“I have to go,” he said suddenly, and I thought maybe he was a little panicked.
“Sorry for keeping you,” I murmured, and he let out a single, strained breath before shaking his head again, faster and with more intention this time.
“No, you didn’t. You, uh… You didn’t do anything. Sorry. I have to…” He trailed off, before taking a few steps back, eventually turning on his heel and fleeing from the aisle and from my sight.