Page 19 of Reckless
Then she got angrier.
“Do you?”She stepped closer again.“Do you know what it feels like to stand in a room where every woman I’m closest to is in love, folded into your family, settled, wanted and then have your mother practically pat me on the head while talking about some lovely woman from London for you?”
I didn’t answer.
Didn’t need to.
Kelly laughed again, but there was no humor in it now.“God.Of course you don’t.”
“That’s not fair.”
“No?”She shook her head.“You sit there in your black shirt and your impossible face and your whole don’t-touch-me-unless-you-come-with-terms energy, and you have no idea what it’s like to be the only one left.”
Something in my chest tightened.
“It isn’t like that,” I said.
“Yes.It is.”
“Why?”she demanded.“Because you’re observant?Because you think you can look at people and diagnose them like market trends?”
“Because I was there.”
Let her hear it.
“I watched the room,” I said.“I watched you laugh.I watched everyone else enjoy it.And I watched exactly how hard you were working not to look like you minded.”
Heat climbed into her face.Anger and exposure.
I knew I should stop.
“And I watched my mother hand me another woman while standing behind your chair.”
Kelly went perfectly still.
“Why did that bother you?”she asked finally.
I could have lied.Could have made it about my mother and nothing else.
Instead I studied Kelly in the dark, with the house glowing behind us and the Atlantic in front of us and all the irritation and heat from dinner still crackling between us, and told her enough truth to get myself into deeper trouble.
“Because I didn’t like the way they were looking at you.”
She stared at me.
“That is not your problem to solve.”
“No,” I said.“But I solved it anyway.”
“By lying.”
“By choosing.”
“You don’t get to choose me without my consent.”
“You’re right.”
That stopped her.
