And how pathetic is that?
I was unsettled. I had the rest of the night to work out how I was going to avoid Kai tomorrow, so there’d be no more discussions about singular moments of drunken emotion. The longest he’d ever come home for was a weekend, so he’d be gone soon enough.
I headed upstairs, Boots jumping ahead of me and curling up next to the heater as I shut the door to the workroom. For the longest time I didn’t move, staring at Boots, lost in a mess of all the things I had hoped would happen when Kai was back in town. I’d always hoped I’d be coolly confident and show him I didn’t need him. Instead, I’d done nothing but stare at him like a freaking idiot.
He’ll be gone soon.
I didn’t know whether to be relieved about that, or disappointed. As far as I assumed, he wasn’t supposed to be in town until after Christmas, when Brooke was due to have the baby, and that would have given me plenty of time to prepare. Him arriving sooner than I’d expected, even for a night, was too much for me to handle. I sat in the silence, but my phone vibrating with messages from the family chat destroyed the peace. I didn’t have to read far to find out that Kai Buchanan was staying at his dad’s place for a while.
A while? What did that even mean? A while sounded like a long time.
Panic hit me, how was I going to hide my feelings and/or not do anything stupid, and how long would I have to keep it up? How long could I avoid him so that I didn’t blurt out the L-word? Dismay turned to self-pity and doubt, and in the end, I gave up sitting and worrying, and went into the kitchen to make a drink, or something, anything to take my mind off the fact that Kai was down at his dad’s place.
Maybe if I was ill, I could miss the next few days? I needed to be ill. I coughed experimentally, but nope, I was way too healthy, and there was no way I’d be able to pull the wool over my family’s eyes, not in the busy build-up to Christmas when I was at my happiest.
Okay, so I’d see Kai, act cool, not go bright red, not recall my disappointment with him, or the silk thing, or the fact I said I was in love with him, or the fact that just recalling love, silk, and the wish, had me hyperventilating.
Stop thinking about it. He’ll be gone soon enough. Ed Gantry asked me out to dinner. I should go. Maybe he kisses like the man in my dreams.
But I didn’t want Ed Gantry with his green eyes and his smile—nope, I wanted caramel warmth and the tortured sadness that sat behind them.
Sleep wasn’t happening; if my mind wasn’t replaying scenes from my life like some weird soap opera, it was being overcome with emotion that Kai was back in town. He knew too much about me, and that was part of growing up in the same place, but also because of that stupid wish.
I buried my face in my pillow, but the damage was done. Nothing was going to get me to sleep—I was a mess of worries and anxiety. I rolled out of bed, and for the longest time, sat there in the dark, scrubbing my eyes and wishing that thinking about Kai and silk didn’t make me feel so upside-down. After a while, I gave up and went out for a glass of water—it was only eleven for God’s sake, and my phone held several messages from each brother, summed up by the one from Duncan.
Callum said you left skating early. I know Kai’s back, so I’m just checking in.
My brothers all felt as if they needed to watch out for me, and for some reason, they obsessed over my love life, my real life, everything. It warmed my heart but made me mad all at the same time. They’d been there forever, all three of them had my back, worried about their little brother, but I’d become an expert in convincing them I was okay.
They’d rallied in the summer when I’d been left stunned by Kai’s reaction to my help. They’d all seen it happen, and I knew for a fact Lucas had gone to Albany to have words with him. Apparently, Kai had been full of remorse, and Lucas understood Kai’s motivations, or something—I didn’t listen much past him saying that he’d been to see Kai. Then, of course, the ghosting from Kai happened, and I thought I’d hidden my hurt well.
Clearly not, if Duncan, the least observant of my brothers, had thought to check in with me.
“Boots licked all the tuna off his kibble.” I read out loud as I typed, then backspaced when Boots leapt up to sit next to me and gave me a decidedly fishy headbutt. “Okay, so I won’t send that.” I pressed a kiss to his furry head, “I’m just going to say it’s all good,” I explained to Boots, and wrote just that, lying about working on sketching the design for the necklace Callum had ordered for Brooke as a new-baby/Merry-Christmas gift. I even added a p.s. about having fun at the pond. It reeked of hey-nothing-to-worry-about-here, and it was all kinds of normal.
I pressed enter before I could second-guess myself, and then quickly shoved the phone back on the charger. Now what?
My eyes caught on the scrap of silk I always had with me, twisted up in the jumble of tiny stones and shiny objects I’d pulled out of my pants pocket. I teased out the buttery sunshine-colored material, but it was the sensory softness and the promise of quiet times when it was only me and my thoughts that drew me to smooth it over one hand. I pressed my lips to it, and ran it across my cheek, and after a few moments I felt the first hint of peace. The power of this tiny scrap of material was incredible, imbued with all the confidence I didn’t have, and touching it calmed me enough for me to close my eyes and rationalize a few of the feelings cascading through me.
I couldn’t lie in bed and think about Kai, about the way he was on the ice, about the fantasies that he would accept every part of me, and that he could ever love the idea of me as much as I loved him.
I dressed again, with layers of sweaters, and a hat, then with a brand-new hot chocolate in my hand and Boots judging me from his space at the end of my bed, I went downstairs into the cold workshop, flicked on the heater and the light, and sat at my workbench. The heating had died on me two days ago, and I was relying on one small heater until the repairman came out on Monday. It wasn’t ideal, but I had commissions to make and stock to create.
It was warm enough to work if I layered up and didn’t go too far from the heater, and I was at my happiest and most calm when I was designing.
The etched bronze bead necklace design was one of the projects I was working on, and I was tantalizingly close to being finished, a bespoke design that already had a buyer, and there was no reason to sit upstairs and wallow in the mess that was my attraction to Kai. Usually, I lost myself in my art for the longest time, but tonight it didn’t work. After making the same mistake for the third time, I gently placed everything back into the felt-lined storage box and closed the lid. My designs deserved more than me using them to forget the past or ignore the present. I’d learned that time and time again.
“I give up,” I muttered, and headed upstairs, restless, annoyed with myself, and not sure what to do.
“I need to get my head straight. I need to feel…” I slipped into my bedroom, opening the closet, and reaching to the back where my box of secrets was hidden. I pulled out the plain brown container and placed it on the bed, lifting the lid, and for a moment, I held my breath. Boots sauntered in, stared at me, then with a twitch of his tail, left me alone when he saw I wasn’t going back to bed. I pushed the door shut after him, then checked that the drapes were fully closed, and only then, did I take off my white T-shirt.