Page 67 of Cruel Kiss

"Like you're waiting for me to figure out what to do with all these stupid feelings!"

He nods, as if I've just given him the exact answer he was waiting for. "Put them on me, Calista."

"That's what I'mtryingto do and you won't take the bait!"

"Wrong. I'm taking all of it." He hasn't moved. He stands in front of me, tall and beautiful, waiting. "Every last word. I'm standing right here. Say all of it. I'm not going anywhere."

"Stop gaslighting me with this fuckingpatience!"

Gaslighting.It's an ugly word. And the second it's out of my mouth, I know it's not fair, because whatever Ronan is doing, this isn't that. This is the opposite of that. He's told me the truth about every ugly thing when he could have lied, laid it all out on my kitchen table one receipt at a time, and here I am being an ungrateful bitch.

Ronan nods again, eyes glowing. "It's not gaslighting to let you feel the things you need to feel, in the order and time in which you need to feel them."

I stare at him through eyes that are suddenly teary. "I keep waiting for you to be him," I whisper. "I keep waiting for you to tell me I'm crazy. To tell me I'm too much. To make me feel like I'm the problem. Todd did that for ten years, and I keep bracing for it, and it never comes, and I don't know what to do with that."

He takes one slow step toward me. Just one. "You're not too much. You never were. You're exactly the right amount of everything, and any man who told you otherwise was a coward and a fool."

My eyes sting. I look down at the cold dishwater on the floor.

"I don't know how to do this," I whisper. "I don't know how to want something and not wait for it to be taken."

"Then we'll figure it out," he says. "Slowly. In whatever order you need."

That, I learn, is the tipping point. It's too much and too soon, so I pull away and go sit at the kitchen table. Ronan lets me go, but he doesn't retreat too far. I feel his presence in the den. In theory, he's reading his papers again, but I know better than that.

I don't want to cry. It feels useless and misplaced. But the tears are knocking on the door anyway, so I sit at the kitchen table with my face in my hands and just try to keep a lid on things. I've almost got it handled, too, when suddenly?—

"Mommy?"

I whip around. Isabella is in the kitchen doorway. I don't know how long she's been there. She's got Doctor Fuzz's shoebox clutched to her chest, and the chrysalis inside has gone dark and papery, close to whatever phase comes next.

"Hey, Bells." I wipe my face fast, though I don't think I was leaking quite yet. "What's up?"

She looks at me. Then she looks at Ronan, who's visible in the next room over. Then back at me. "Why aren't you and Mr. Ronan talking to each other?"

The kitchen goes quiet in a whole new way.

The easiest thing to do would be to distract her. But I promised myself, the morning after a man died on my stairs, that I would not pass my trauma down to my daughter wrapped up as a bedtime story. I told her the truth about the loud noise. I have to tell her the truth about this.

I crouch down so I'm at her level. Ronan doesn't move from the couch in the den, but I feel him watching.

"We are talking," I say. "Just—not our best talking. Grown-ups do that sometimes. We get our feelings all tangled up and we have a hard time saying them, so we go quiet instead. It's not a good way to do it. But it happens."

Isabella considers this. "Are you having a fight?"

"Sort of. A quiet one."

"Hayden says when you have a fight, you're supposed to make up. He says you always make him say sorry to me even when it'smyfault." She frowns. "It's usually his fault, though."

"It usually is," I agree with a wobbly laugh. "The thing is, darling, some tangles take longer than asorryto untangle. Mr. Ronan and I—" I stop. I don't have the second half of that sentence quite yet.

Isabella waits. She's a patient interrogator. She learned it from him, probably.

"We're figuring it out," I finish. Weakly. Even Isabella can hear how weak it is.

She looks past me, at Ronan. "Didyoudo something bad?"

Without looking, I brace for him to give her a soft version, a grown-up dodge, ano no, sweetheart,the way you'd protect a kid from the truth. Instead, he joins us and crouches down, too, slow, so all three of us are down at Isabella-level with a caterpillar between us.