Page 73 of Lily In The Valley
“You think I don’t know what this was?” she asked. “You think you’re the first man to climb into my bed just to spite the woman he actually wants?”
I finally looked at her. She wasn’t mad. Just tired.
“Tasha, I” I started before she cut me off.
“You don’t have to explain,” she said. “I saw the way the two of you looked at each other in the club. I know I’m not her. I don’t need the pretty version of the truth.”
“That’s not what I was going to say,” I said.
“That’s the problem with your type,” she replied. “You never do, but you leave a mess anyway.”
I grabbed my shirt. She didn’t stop me. Just watched me with those sharp, unflinching eyes. The kind that saw too much and asked for nothing. My hand hovered near the doorknob. Then I turned it.
“I don’t want to leave a mess this time,” I said.
Her brow arched, skeptical. “What does that mean?”
“It means,” I hesitated, the words bitter on my tongue even before they left. “Maybe I need to try something different.”
“Different how?”
“I don’t know. Something easy. Low-maintenance.”
She snorted. “So, you’re here to make me your low-maintenance rebound?”
“Chill,” I said, laughing. “That’s not what I meant. What I’m trying to say is that maybe I need someone who doesn’t need saving. Just a place to land.”
She crossed her arms. “And that place is me?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “But I don’t want to leave this how I left everything else.”
She studied me a long beat. “If you’re looking for safe, I’m not that. But I am clear.”
I nodded. “That’s more than I’ve had in a long time.”
A heavy pause filled the space between us.
She didn’t smile. She didn’t soften. But she looked toward the dim light of her bedroom, and said, “Let’s start with breakfast in the morning.”
That made me crack a laugh. Not because it was funny, but because it gave me just enough room to breathe. That wouldhave to be enough for now. But as I laid back on her bed, her hand grazing a fiery trail up my ribs and over the lily tattoo on my chest, the ache didn’t leave. I was building something new. But the blueprints were soaked in grief. And whether Tasha knew it or not, she was stepping into a house haunted by another woman’s name.
Fuck.
Chapter 23
Kelly
The silence came first.
It slipped through the cracks after Khalil left, curling into the corners of my apartment, settling on my skin like a thin sheet draped over the furniture of an abandoned house. It was in the shadows behind my TV. In the hum of the refrigerator. In the hollowed-out breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding since the door closed behind him. I thought I could outrun the noise.
For days, that turned into weeks, movies played in the background while I reviewed patient files. Music blasted while I took showers and got ready for work. I thought maybe if I filled the room with enough noise, I could drown out the words I didn’t say. But even through the distractions, the silence stayed. Along with the weight in my chest and the ache beating the backs of my eyes.
I reached for my phone. The first message I sent not too long after the door closed behind him was short.
Me
Let me know when you make it home.
