Page 59 of Protect Me
My face crumpled. I shook my head. “Vini, c’mon. He’s Vik. The man has kissed more women—and who knows what else he’s done with them—than I could even fathom. He spent years of his life dodging relationships for a reason. Just because he hasn’t been dating the past six or seven months doesn’t mean that part of him is gone.”
“True,” she murmured, “but Vik has ghosts too, you know.”
I paused, straightening. My phone was propped against the detergent, revealing my startled expression.
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t you remember Emma?”
Emma. I wracked my memories, combing through them. A niggling of familiarity came with the name, but nothing obvious at first.
“Emma?”
Vini nodded. “It’s not my story to tell,” she murmured in the calm way that she did, but hinted at deeper intricacies, “but he had his heart broken before. Sort of curled into himself after that, then kept everyone at arm’s distance. Happened in high school and spurred this huge drama my parents had to get involved with. The Merry Idiots really saved him, in some ways. Grady had detention over it—this whole mess.”
“How do Inotremember this?”
A portion of Vik’s timeline hadn’t been opened to me? That didn’t feel right at all.
“Vik was a playboy for a reason. Because of this foundational thing with Emma, he’s never trusted women. I wrote a paper on him in college, but changed the name to someone else. He never found out.”
She giggled to herself.
The dark side of my shining Indian god knocked some of the air out of my sails, but no love from my heart. Whatever he faced, I’d willingly brave it with him.
Wouldn’t I?
I swallowed. Yes. Whole-heartedly, but that didn’t mean I could trust it. Not yet. Not until I knew and understood more.
“Can Vik actually settle down into a relationship with one person for more than three weeks? That’s the question I’m turning over in my mind,” I asked, relieved to have someone I could ask.
“He’s never invited anyone else to live with him.”
“Yeah, but he probably sees me like a sister.”
She made a dismissive noise. “Stop that, you know it’s not entirely true. Yes, he cares for you. Yes, you’re part of the family. Does that mean his feelings have remained entirely platonic? Not by a long shot.”
A flutter of hope lit me up inside. “Really?”
Vini laughed, and the phone shook as she straightened it. “Yes! Really. Don’t you see it?”
“I want to.”
“Then look for it.”
“What if it’s all in my head and I make it up out of desperation and it’s not real?”
“You wouldn’t do that.”
“How doyouknow?”
“You’re a brave and ferocious woman, Kate. No one has strength like you. Time to pull on your big girl panties and face the truth, all right? Vik is a safe spot for you in more ways than one, and that’s all I’m going to say.”
The words sank into me, like my toes in the murky bottom of Tempest Lake. Oh, if they were true . . . Barely able to catch the thought, I let it flutter away, lost in the morass of my mind.
“Thanks.”
“Talk to me about Timothy.” She straightened, all business now. “Is the restraining order in place yet? Have you seen him? What news on that front?”
