Page 64 of Protect Me
Minutes passed. Maybe hours. The world continued on around my oblivious, frightened bubble. At the heart of this lay one sordid, nasty, buried-too-deep-to-see-it-clearly truth.
I had felt this way before.
This bubbling, happy anxiety. The thrill of a chase, of a connection. A feeling buried deep in a pit I’d long tried to ignore. Kate wasn’t the first woman to affect me this deeply.
No, Emma Goldmann held that accolade.
The honor went to a seventeen-something-year-old-girl that, in one fell swoop, taught me the ways of the world. Taught me whonotto be if I didn’t want to experience crushing regret or harrowing sorrow.
Emma.
A woman I hadn’t thought of in fifteen years. Or maybe I thought about her all the time, but wouldn’t acknowledge it. She hovered on the surface of everything, and nothing, at the same time.
“Kate isn’t Emma, you idiot,” I muttered.
Didn’t work.
Reality would never erase wounds like this.
The echo of Emma’s name rang in my soul as I turned my car back to life. No reason to go back into ancient history. No good came from drudging up the past, opening old wounds, bleeding historical scars. Not even the big ones.
The ugly ones.
The engine chugged, started, and settled. Air conditioning caressed my face again as I turned my thoughts back to life. If I raced, I’d make it to my physical therapy appointment on time. Life needed to happen. Somethingexceptthinking about her body smashed against mine, only not out of fear or panic.
I had to fix this.
Somehow.
My keys clattered when they landed on a hook suspended from the wall near my door. The townhouse lay quiet, even though Kate’s car was parked outside. No lights. No stirrings. I locked the door behind me.
Carefully, I stole my way down the hall and toward her bedroom. The door lay canted open an inch. Before I peered inside, I gently rapped on the door with my knuckles. My knee ached from physical therapy, and my stomach growled with hunger. I’d been distracted the whole session, thinking about what an idiot I’d been.
No sound came from inside.
I peeked inside to see her curled in a ball on the bed, eyes closed. Her breaths expanded and dropped in regular, wispy intervals. I paused, then leaned my head against her doorframe. I didn’t have it in me to wake her up. All the things I’d collected in my head to say dropped.
Somehow, I needed to let her know that she wasn’t like the others. That I thought I was ready for something different in a way I never had been before, though I couldn’t put my finger on why or how.
Could I actually commit to someone?
I never had before, not truly. The deep knowing in my chest told me yes, I could do this. Would Kate believe me, though? Her skepticism couldn’t be blamed.
It meant something to me,I wanted to say.
Instead, I stole away, the ghost of her kiss heady in my mind.
ChapterFifteen
KATELYN
The next day, I grumped around the Frolicking Moose in a bad attempt not to reveal how stirred-up that kiss made me.
That accident.
Could kisses be an accident? Or had my subconscious finally taken over and drawn us together in an explicitly defiant way?
Regardless of the reason, it happened. No going back now.
