Chapter 8
Eight
Kelly’s Home
Xerses
By the time we got back to the compound, Kelly had started avoiding looking directly at me.
The way she slowed half a step in the foyer or the way she touched her hair absently, or how she sat beside me, and fit into the space with me and my family like she belonged.
The way her shoulders loosened and then tightened again when she said, “I need to run home for a minute.”
That one stopped me. Fast. Clearly she needed out and I understood the impulse.
I also knew that if she left alone, my mother would ask when she’d be back, Hope would text, Britney would analyze, Charlie would turn it into a joke, and the whole house would keep moving around the absence. Nothing in this family stayed casual once it had a story attached to it.
Kelly was halfway to the stairs before I said, “I’ll take you.”
She stopped and turned.
“I can drive myself,” she said.
“If you leave alone, my mother will start taking attendance.”
Her mouth flattened. She knew I was right. She nodded. “That doesn’t mean I need an escort.”
“No. It means you need cover.”
She studied me for one beat longer than she needed to and I stilled to let her.
“You don’t have to come in,” she said finally as she pivoted to let me pass.
I picked up her bag from where she’d set it beside the console table and carried it for her. “I remember what I promised and I won’t overstep.”
She took the bag from me. “You usually overstep.”
“Only when we both understand exactly what we want.”
“That’s not the defense you think it is.”
I almost smiled. She saw that and narrowed her eyes before turning toward the door.
Kelly sat turned partly toward the window, one leg crossed beneath the other, and her sandals heel hanging off the edge of her foot.
When I took off, she relaxed and the silence between us didn’t feel empty anymore.
I drove one-handed and let the quiet sit until she’d break it.
Something changed in her face. I caught it in the windshield’s reflection before she turned away again.
That was true enough to be worth the risk.
The rest of the drive unfolded in stretches of silence and short, low exchanges that felt more intimate than long conversations had any right to.
At one point she told me to take the left by the florist.
At another, she pointed at a tiny seafood place with peeling paint and a hand-lettered sign.
“That place has the best chowder on the island,” she said.
“That place looks structurally unsound.”
Her eyes widened. “That place has been here for eighty years.”
“That does not increase my confidence.”
“Their lobster bisque would change your personality.”
I winced. “My personality does not require change.”
“Your personality requires several things. Starting with humility near seafood.”
“That is unkind,” I said.
“And likely true.”
She laughed. That sound did something to me.
Her apartment building sat three streets back from the water in a line of practical, low-key rentals that would have looked forgettable to anyone inclined to measure the world by spectacle.
I parked under a maple tree starting to throw longer shadows across the lot. The place looked like I remembered it from the first night I’d come.
She reached for the door handle in the car.
“Wait.”
Her head turned. “What now.”
“You didn’t tell me what we’re here for.”
She blinked once. She blushed and then looked away. “A different dress.”
I watched the line of her profile.
“Only a dress.”
Her fingers tightened on the handle. “And shoes.”
“Kelly.”
“What.”
“If you need twenty minutes alone, say that.”
She went still without moving at all. Then her throat moved once and she looked at me. “I need twenty minutes alone,” she said.
I nodded. “Fine. I’ll wait here.”
But she didn’t move or get out of the car.
I stilled. Something shifted in the car. She took a breath and said, quieter, “You can come up after.”
My heart sped up. I wasn’t expecting her to say that.
“Text me,” I said.
She agreed, got out, and walked toward the stairs without looking back.
I watched her go.
Her apartment lights came on upstairs about thirty seconds later.
I stayed in the car for the first five minutes. Checked email. Replied to one message Roman should have handled himself. Ignored three texts from Charlie because I preferred peace. Watched the evening turn from gold to softer blue in the lot around me.
At minute ten, I got out.
At minute twelve, I was leaning against the hood of the car with my sleeves rolled once and my attention very much not on the phone in my hand.
Kelly’s window glowed above me.
I found myself imagining the shape of the room inside. The couch. The books. The lamp by the chair. Her crossing barefoot from one part of the apartment to another with no one to witness it. Her dropping the tension from her shoulders because there was no audience left to brace against.
That image sat under my skin in a way I did not enjoy enough to call comfortable.
At minute nineteen, my phone lit.
Kelly: You can come up.
I put the phone in my pocket and headed upstairs.
Kelly opened the door before I knocked.
She’d changed into a softer top and her hair pulled up now in a loose, failing knot that left the back of her neck.
“Hi,” she said.
The word landed differently here.
“Hi.”
“You came up fast.”
“You texted.”
“Sixty seconds ago.”
“I was already at the stairs.”
Her face changed. “That sounds like a confession.”
“It’s a fact.”
She shook her head. “Facts and confessions are not mutually exclusive.”
“With you, they rarely are.”
She stepped aside to let me in.
Her apartment was warm. She had a table lamp lit.
There were dishes in the sink. A cardigan thrown over the arm of the couch.
A stack of papers on the coffee table with colored sticky notes protruding from all of them at once.
A half-burned candle by the television. A framed photo of her with the girls on the shelf.
Books in small unstable piles that looked lived with instead of arranged.
The door clicked shut behind me.
Kelly moved past me toward the kitchen. “I made tea.”
My heart beat faster as I gaze at her. “You made tea?”
She gave me a look over her shoulder. “You say that like I just announced a felony.”
“I’m adjusting to the cultural theft.”
“It’s black tea. You can’t own leaves.”
“I can judge how they’re prepared.”
“You can judge from the couch.”
I sat. Mostly because if I stayed standing in her kitchen, watching her move around in her own space while my body was watching her moves and gazing at the simple sight of her neck, this evening was going to transition both our lives.
There was a blanket half folded over one arm and a book turned facedown on the side table that looked like she’d been reading it until life had interrupted. Her apartment smelled like coffee, tea, lavender, and faint vanilla I couldn’t place.
I found her home more intimate than the penthouse had ever been.
Kelly came back with two mismatched mugs and handed me one before settling into the opposite corner of the couch, one leg tucked under her.
“You’re staring,” she said.
I looked down at the mug. Amber tea. Strong. No sugar. Good.
“At your apartment.”
“You can stop. It’s not that exciting.”
“It is to me.”
She frowned slightly. “Why.”
Honest question.
“Because it looks like you live here.”
That made her pause.
She held her mug and gazed at it as she said, “That is the strangest compliment anyone has ever given me.”
I shrugged. “Most places I am look staged, professional but yours looks inhabited.”
“You say inhabited like it’s attractive.”
“It is.”
“My apartment has dishes in the sink.”
“Yes.”
“Evidence of you and of a life being lived. That is worth more than anything in my penthouse.”
She sighed. But then she looked around as if seeing the room through my eyes for the first time. She sucked in her lips and curled both hands around the mug. “Your apartment looks like no one lives there.”
I stared at her. She shrugged one shoulder. “That was also a compliment.”
“No, it wasn’t.” I said and met her gaze.
“No, it wasn’t.”
I laughed and she smiled into her tea.
I leaned back against the couch and let the silence sit. It wasn’t the silence from the car anymore. Today felt like a beginning.
“Did you actually need a different dress?” I asked after a minute.
Kelly snorted. “No.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“I did need five minutes not hearing Charlie breathe.”
“Fair.”
“And my apartment felt safer than the driveway.”
I turned to her over the rim of the mug. “Safer from what.”
She considered the question. “All of it.”
“The family.” I sipped the tea and then added. “Me.”
Her eyes came back to mine slowly.
“Yes,” she said. “True.”
I respected that enough to ask the next question carefully.
“And now?”
She looked down at her tea. “Now I’m more rested.”
That almost made me smile.
Because it was evasive. Because we both knew it. Because Kelly, for all her clarity and backbone, still preferred to dodge in small ways when something got too close to the center.
Something moved through her expression then. soft enough that if I hadn’t been paying exact attention, I might have missed it and no one had ever been able to accuse me of not paying attention.
“You like being near me, don’t you,” she said quietly.
The room froze. Kelly seemed to hear what she had said one beat after saying it.
I set my mug down on the coffee table and looked at her.
Her lips parted.
“I like your apartment,” I said. “I like the way you move in it.” I let one beat pass. “And I like being in rooms where you forget to perform for a few seconds at a time.”
Color moved up her throat, but Kelly held very still.
Then she said, in a voice rougher than before, “That’s a lethal thing to say to a woman used to sitting alone on her own couch.”
I leaned forward slightly, forearms on my knees. “You asked.”
“That doesn’t mean you have to answer every question like a loaded gun.”
“That’s exactly what it means.”