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“That’s not how it works, Kami.”
But she was set on this idea. “What if you ask your dad or even your mom. They must know so many—”
“Kami!” I took hold of her shoulders, prepared to shake the senses back into her. “It’s not that easy. I can’t just find another woman.”
She stared at me. “Why not? There has to be—”
I did shake her this time. “Because I…” I cut myself off. Confessing I fucking loved her wasn’t going to make this situation easier. Saying it when she was trying so hard to break free of me would only hurt her more. “Because I just can’t,” I finished harshly.
“Can you try? Please? For me?”
Fuck me.
“Goddamn it, kitten.”
She kissed me.
After all that, after putting both our emotions through the blender, she brushed her pouty lips over mine. Her arms curled my neck, holding me to her as I deepened the strokes. Maybe it was the knowledge that we were on the clock, but nothing had tasted sweeter.
I wondered how the hell I got to this point. How had I fallen so fucking deep for the one person I shouldn’t have? How had she burrowed so deep under my skin that extracting her now was excruciating? How did this happen?
The memory was immediate, as if my traitorous brain had been prepared to throw it back into my face.
It had been summer. I was just leaving my father’s apartment office on my way to meet Liya for lunch and there she was, sitting with her long legs bent under her on the sofa, face buried in a book. She was always buried in a book, I’d realized. For as long as I could remember; if she wasn’t with the girls, she was reading. But it was the battered book pressed up to her nose that gave me pause mid stride.
The Count of Monte Cristo.
I hadn’t read it since college. It had been one of my favorites and the fact that someone else was reading it had made me veer off course until I stood before her, blanketing her with my shadow. She’d blinked and raised her big eyes up at me and smiled. For a second, just one, maybe two, I was struck by how beautiful she was. Her dark lashes were long and thick, the shape upturned under arched brows. There was such soft purity in their depths, as if she’d seen the world and loved everything about it, like nothing could ever possibly go wrong and there was hope in everything.
I’d asked her what she was reading, despite already knowing and she’d held up the front for me to see.
“It’s my go-to when I’m in a book slump.”
I chuckled at that.“Mine’sThe Grapes of Wrath.”
Her pert little nose had wrinkled. “I never could get through that one.”
And just like that, I found myself sitting on the opposite end of the sofa with her, talking at length about Edmond and theChateau d’If.It was the most words we’d ever spoken to each other, and I hadn’t wanted it to end. By the time Lavena had emerged from her room dressed to go out, twenty minutes had flown by, feeling like only minutes. Kami had smiled at me as she’d gotten to her feet.
“Here,” she’d said, holding out her copy, a ratty, smelly, discolored thing that probably needed to be burned.
I declined, telling her I could grab a copy on my way out, but she’d waved it at me, insistent.
“I think you’ll like this one. Whoever had it before, made a bunch of notes in the margins and I think they’re very well said.”
She wasn’t wrong. Someone had defaced nearly every page with neat, loopy pencil marks, sparking outrage in me.
“Why would anyone do this?” I muttered.
Kami laughed. “I love it. It’s like having a fellow bookworm’s thoughts right there with you.”
I still didn’t like it, but I accepted her gift. “Don’t you want to finish it?”
She shrugged. “I have another copy at home.”
With that and a wave, she joined my sister and left the apartment.
Why anyone would have more than one copy of a book baffled me almost as much as why anyone would want something that was ruined, battered, and destroyed by another person. It turned out that nearly all her books were all the same.She intentionally found the most destroyed books possible and kept them. When I asked where on earth she was finding them, she casually shrugged and said, “Bookstores, flea markets, and occasionally library sales. Those are my favorite.” The more wrecked the book was, the more she seemed to love it.
