Page 32 of The Edge of Summer
I spin, reaching for a bottle of vodka on the back shelf. In the process, my elbow knocks into another bottle that I forgot to put back after the last drink. Time moves both fast and slow in the way it does when you wait for something to hit the ground.
But the bottle never makes it that far. Luke reaches out, his hand grasping the neck. He successfully stops it from careening to the floor and smashing at our feet. The only problem is that his body is now insanely close to mine, his chest pressed impossibly close to my back.
I can feel every breath he takes. I can sense the way his body tenses. I wait for him to move away. Yet he doesn’t. Now time shifts and bends around me. I’m reminded of that day in my kitchen when he stopped me from falling. Only then, I could see his face. Right now I have no idea what he’s thinking, andGod, I want to. What I wouldn’t give to know what is running through his head.
When he draws his body away from mine, I suddenly feel cold. He sets the bottle safely back on the shelf and clears his throat. “We need more lemons,” he declares.
Before I can say anything, he takes off toward the kitchen. I would have believed him, if not for the full bowl of citruses on the counter.
Okay, he officially hates me.
I finish making that drink, and then I grab a cloth and begin wiping down the bar top. When I get to a particularly stubborn spot, I scrub—hard.
“You know what?” I mutter to myself. “No.”
He doesn’t get to run away. I want an explanation—a reason why he can’t stand to be in the same room as me formore than a few minutes. I throw the cloth down on the counter, and then I follow after him. I march right past the cooks and push into the walk-in refrigerator, letting the door smack closed behind me.
CHAPTER
TWELVE
LUKE
Fucking stupid.
The cool air of the walk-in does nothing to dissuade the heat crawling up my spine thanks to her.You’re an idiot, Bowman.A goddamn idiot. I shake my head at myself. At my foolishness. Why am I letting her get under my skin? I’ve only known the woman for a month.
When the door swings open and then slams shut, I look up. I shouldn’t be surprised to find that she followed me. “What are you doing?” I demand.
Delilah stands guard in front of the exit. There is a stubborn set to her frame that tells me I’m not going to get out of this metal box easily. “Getting answers.”
I give her my back, pretending to focus on the lemons I didn’t really need to grab. I just needed a minute to breathe—to extricate myself from the sphere ofher. Having to watch her strut around in those goddamn cutoff shorts is its own brand of torture, but physically being close to her, like that day in her kitchen, muddles my brain. I can’tafford that.
Kristina made my head spin, too, and look how that ended. Abbie had nightmares for months, and I let my family down. Nothing good comes from me being distracted. Not then and certainly not now.
“Luke,” she says, softer now. “Why do you hate me?”
The quiet plea in her voice breaks me. In setting out to protect myself, I’ve made her feel like I don’t like her. That’s not the problem. The problem is that I do—too much. But fuck, I never want to hear that sad quaver of her voice again.
I roll a lemon in my hands, still with my back to her. “I don’t hate you.”
She scoffs. “Fine, maybe you don’t hate me, but you sure as hell don’tlikeme. I’m just asking for some constructive criticism here, Chief.”
That does me in. People call me Chief about a hundred times a day, but hearing it from her lips—right here, in this moment—sets something off inside my chest. I spin to face her, and Delilah looks startled at the move.
“What do you want from my family?”
What do you want fromme?
All Kristina ever did was take, take, take. So the question launches from my mouth without any grace. It encompasses all the things I can’t say out loud; all the things I wish I had asked Kristina. Before it was too late. I’ve always prided myself on being able to read people. But somehow, I managed to miss all the signs in the woman I thought I loved—the woman I thought loved me. And my niece paid the price.
Delilah’s eyes turn quicksilver, more grey than blue. “Nothing. Despite what you seem to think, I didn’t seekthem out. I didn’t ask for them to take pity on me. If you don’t like it, take it up with them, but I’m not going to apologize.”
This gives me pause. “You think they pity you?”
Her laugh is humourless. “Of course they do. Most days, I’m just trying to keep my head above water, and it’s painfully obvious.”
In this moment, Idofeel sorry for her. Because she has evidently lived a life where genuine care and affection can so easily be mistaken for pity. If I know one thing, it’s that my family has welcomed Delilah with open arms because that’s just the type of people they are. Not because they think she is incapable of handling things on her own.
