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“First time leaving the house.” I shrugged. “About what I expected.”
With her lips pressed together, she looked like she was about to cry. When she spoke again, it sounded like she already was.
“I don’t know how to thank you—”
“Don’t worry about it. It’s my pleasure.”
Fuck.
I derived too much pleasure from her. More than I could have expected, and yet it felt so wrong. That wanting inside of me grew every day, and it killed me to know that, someday, this would end. That Kelly would heal and get better—exactly like I wanted—and would no longer need me around.
My heart thrashed in my chest, rebelling against the very idea. I clutched at it, like I could somehow stop the pain with my bare palm.
“Mom!” Kelly yelled from the other room. “You coming, or not?”
Erin gave me a sad smile, then turned on her heel. “Coming, honey.”
I followed her out to the living room, and my breath was stolen straight from my chest. As if I hadn’t just seen Kelly. As if I hadn’t been hovering over her moments before, seconds from kissing her pretty little smirk right off her face.
That damn smirk. She flashed it at me again, handing me a bowl of popcorn before snagging my free hand and dragging me toward the large recliner at the side of the room.
“Might be more comfortable than the floor,” she told me, all quiet and shy and so fucking breathtaking I couldn’t take it.
I settled in, trying to focus on the TV, only for my gaze to be drawn back to her when the intro scene started.
It was Die Hard. The same movie we’d watched just that morning. Kelly didn’t look my way, even though I couldn’t keep my attention off of her. This time, as the movie played, I noticed more than I had from the floor in front of her back at the safe house. This time, beyond seeing her rapt attention on the screen, I also noticed the way her lips moved as if she could recite every word they said, and the facial expressions that went right along with it.
And damn, if it didn’t make me want her more.
8
KELLY
I lost myself in our family tradition of watching the Die Hard movies on Christmas Eve. I felt almost normal, almost like I was still the Kelly O’Connor I was before.
We ate Dad’s homemade lasagna and Mom’s freshly cooked-but-store-bought apple and pecan pies. Lee even passed my father’s inane Die Hard movie trivia questions, surpassing my expectations and making me think he didn’t really need me to secretly force him to watch the movies prior to us leaving home.
Somewhere between John and Jack McClane seeing each other in Russia and them driving to Pripyat, I must have fallen asleep. I awoke from a nightmare—one where a helicopter was coming at us, at me and Lee, as we stood at a precipice. Instead of jumping into a pool of contaminated water, I locked eyes with Rhys before he crashed the chopper into the building, incinerating us all.
My skin was covered in sweat and my heart was racing a mile a minute as I jolted upright in my bed. I tossed the blankets aside, hoping that the cool air of my childhood bedroom would soothe me.
It didn’t.
There was only one thing that would, and he wasn’t at the foot of the bed.
Creeping slowly, quietly, I climbed from my mattress and stepped across the hall and into the guest room where Lee slept. If I hadn’t just watched him disappear in a ball of flame, I might have found him comical. He was so big, so insanely tall, that his feet hung off the end of the small bed.
There was a foot of space behind him, and it called to me. I couldn’t convince myself not to move forward, not to climb in beside him and lay there like I belonged. I closed my eyes, breathing in breath after shaky breath of his scent—a combination of soap and masculinity that brought me more comfort than my mother’s favorite perfume. At the same time, terror that he might touch me raced through me.
I tried to fall asleep again, but each time I got close, my mind returned to the dark innards of the boat. Beside me, Lee moved, and fear pulsed through every fiber of my being.
The same fear that had me running to my mother’s side earlier, when I thought Lee might kiss me.
I didn’t deserve a kiss. I didn’t deserve a single thing Lee had already done for me.
And yet, I couldn’t seem to let him go.
Rolling off the bed, I was halfway back to the door when I stubbed my toe on the old rocking chair—the one Mom insisted on keeping in the room despite Dad insisting that it was a hazard someone might trip over in the middle of the night. I cursed under my breath as I grabbed my toe and hopped around on one foot.
