Page 57 of Protect Me
“I’m glad,” I said softly.
A touch landed on my shoulder. Startled, I tilted my head back to see her peering at me with a half-smile.
“Thank you.”
Unable to speak, I just nodded. She lay back, legs long, and stacked her hands behind her head. Like a cat in sunshine, she sprawled out, arms golden in the summer sun. The urge to throw my arm around her ribs, pull her close, and nuzzle into her neck swept over me. I tucked the grass in between my teeth and stared at the water instead.
A brewing truth stirred. I didn’t fight it, but I wouldn’t look directly at it either. I’d never felt it before and I needed to weigh it out, inspect it, figure out what it wanted.
Dredges of my previous relationships—one could scoff at the word, because I’d never truly really committed to many—arose from the depths of mind and soul. Arms-length had been simple enough. Lonely, but easy.
Remembrances slipped out from their hiding places around Kate, and this enchanting moment was no different. She was too much light and goodness in one space to let the darkness stay, like holding a moonbeam.
Transcendent, but slippery.
Such retrospections returned now, ushered by a shuddering realization that all my life, I’d intentionally played with something that wasn’t . . . real. Passion. Infatuation. Amma’s lectures to find a woman with a good family and make babies bounced around my head. Now, they settled for the first time.
Who wants someone else forever?I used to think.
Now, I wondered if maybe forever wasn’t long enough.
Kate stirred up passion and infatuation for me in spades, yet it didn’t stop there. Unlike all the others, the tendrils of her power unfurled far longer, far deeper, than anyone else had gone before. Roots digging into the unbroken, dry, cracked surface of my heart.
Why?
The answers eluded me. In the midst of such thoughts, only one thing seemed abundantly clear.
Damn, but I’d fallen hard.
ChapterThirteen
KATELYN
“So,” Vini drawled. “You went to Tempest Lake last week?”
A warm wash of recollection flowed through me after her inquiring tone, though the lingering note set me on edge. Vini fished for something when she elongated her vowels like that. I smiled just to set her off. Her probing gaze studied me through the phone, her lovely face framed in a cut bob of black hair, tapered back.
“It was so fun.”
“The pictures looked like it.”
“We stayed for four or five hours.”
“You didn’t camp?”
“Not this time.”
I set aside a shirt I’d folded to hang it up later, and reached for a pair of pants. Vikram was at work, leaving me alone in the house with chores and oddities for the day. A pair of panties hung off a peg near the back window to dry, next to one of my favorite bras. Littered amongst stuff in the kitchen was a half-eaten package of my favorite crackers, a mug of tea from breakfast, and a note for Vikram to call Amma in my handwriting.
Amidst the same gentle mess lingered Vikram. A tube of his favorite honey lip balm. A business card for a new yoga studio on the other side of town, and a hastily-scratched card with a Senegalese recipe for chicken yassa. We both lived in a not-messy-but-not-neat in-between, with the stuff of life spilling out the edges.
Like . . . home.
Without Vini, the only home I would have ever known was decorated with used syringes, littered bodies, and crushed beer cans. Yet another way her family saved me.
Vini sighed. “Tempest Lake sounds like a dream. I haven’t been there in ten years, and I miss it. Except for that one time I broke my ankle and Vikram bellyached about carrying me back. Remember?”
I giggled. “Definitely. How’s the baby?”
