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He clutched at his heart, then jerked the window open. “The hell is wrong with you?”
“I slipped, okay?”
“The question is, why are you back here to begin with?”
Pulling my aching foot back up onto the snowbank surrounding the window well, I wrapped my arms around myself and looked away. “I thought… maybe…”
“You know I have a front door, right?” His eyes were wide with a mischief that called straight to my broken heart, the crooked smile on his face tempting me in a way Lee’s didn’t. “Give me a minute, I’ll meet you out back.”
Henry slammed the window closed and disappeared, and I stood, brushing myself off before wandering through the snow to the back door. He opened it in under a minute, and I could feel the heat that trembled out on a breeze of billowing, weed-scented smoke. I didn’t wait for an invitation, just barged right on in.
“What are you looking for?” He had his arms crossed in front of him when I made it to the middle of the kitchen and turned back.
My hands automatically went to my hair, and I swept it off my shoulders, twisting it in a knot while brandishing it like a shield. I had next to nothing on me except the twenty I’d found sticking out of Mom’s wallet on the kitchen counter before I slipped outside.
I shook my head, my top lip pulled between my teeth. “I don’t have much. But I need something.”
That mischievous smirk lit his face once again. “Right this way.”
Henry led me through his house, and I was relieved he didn’t turn for the basement stairs. Instead, he grabbed a little tacklebox from under the end table beside the couch and pulled out a joint. “Merry Christmas. First one’s on me.”
Without thinking, I reached for it. I let him light it for me, then took my first hit. It wasn’t what I wanted, but it took the edge off. Gave me something to hold onto when everything else was being pulled away.
Henry told me to stick around, but I knew better than that. I knew better than to trust him the way I’d trusted Rhys.
The way I trusted Lee.
I tossed the twenty dollar bill on the table and scrambled for the door before he could stop me.
Then I drifted. Through the streets in the blistering cold, the marijuana just enough to make me not care. I was dead anyway. Dead inside with no one to hold on to. No one to care.
“Kelly!” Footsteps pounded on the pavement, and I froze in my spot, head whipping around to find the threat. A monstrous beast came running toward me, his emerald eyes shining and his copper hair looking like fire in the sun.
He swooped me off the freezing pavement, into his enormous chest as his humongous arms wrapped around me. “Kelly.” His hand found my cheek, and his touch burned, the heat of his skin against my frozen skin. “Are you okay?”
It was as close to a whisper as the man could get, but I had no trouble hearing. Not with his lips pressed against my cheek, not as his breath blistered my skin. He pressed kisses to my face, held on to me like I was something precious instead of just some girl he’d been forced to take care of. I wanted to cry out at the injustice of it all, cry that I needed this man to keep me sane when he didn’t want me at all.
He would never touch me.
Never kiss me.
Never want me.
“Fuck, Kelly.” He hooked my dangling legs around his wide hips, until I was wrapped around him like his arms were wrapped around me. He buried his face in my neck, breathing me in like he could consume me.
I wanted him to.
I wanted to get lost in him.
“Scared the shit out of me, little hellion.” As he said it, his lips brushed my throat. I froze, breath held and heart racing.
He did it again.
Did it in a way that made me think he would do this to his girlfriend. Like maybe he thought I could be.
He lifted his head, and I braced for more, only for him to press his forehead to mine.
“Thought I’d lost you.”
