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“You were admiring it in the window,” I remind her.
We’re standing in the jewelry store downtown. We ate lunch and were walking on the street. I discovered something about Kayden. She’s not real big on going into shops, but she fucking loves looking in windows. It’s the craziest thing. It does suit me however, because I hate shopping. Still, when she admired the pendant through the glass, I couldn’t resist the urge to go in and buy it for her. I didn’t expect it would freak her out.
“Well, yeah. It’s pretty, but that doesn’t mean you are supposed to buy it for me.”
“I wanted to,” I tell her, enjoying watching the way her finger is moving back and forth against the diamond.
“It’s too much money,” she argues again.
“Babe,” I respond, shaking my head.
“I’m serious. It’s too much money.”
“It was just a couple hundred dollars, Kayden.”
“You act like that’s small change,” she argues.
“Damn, women are supposed to love getting diamonds, They’re not supposed to bust a man’s balls.”
“I’m not busting your balls. I’m just saying it’s a lot. Sorry if I’m not like your other women,” she mutters, looking down at the necklace and not at my face. She almost looks… embarrassed.
“Stop that,” I tell her.
“What?” she asks, stubbornly, defiance flashing in her eyes when she finally looks at me.
“I’ve never bought another woman a diamond, Kayden. Not even my ex-wife.”
Her face had started to go soft, and at the mention of my ex, I see shock. Christ, I haven’t cared about a woman really, not like this, but even I’m smart enough to know you don’t mention your ex around the woman you’re slipping your dick into.
Or at least I should have been smart enough.
“You were married?”
“Kayden, I’m thirty. Is it that hard to believe I’ve been married?”
“Well I don’t guess, I mean obviously it was a possibility. I just… I never really thought about it. What happened?”
“Came home early one day, found her sucking off someone I thought of as a friend, or at the very least someone I trusted enough to put my life in his hands.”
“She cheated on you?”
“Yeah.”
“With your friend?”
“Not sure I’d call him a friend now, Baby Girl.”
“What a bitch,” she huffs, clearly outraged, making me grin.
“That’s one word for her,” I respond, taking Kayden’s hand in mine and walking down the sidewalk. “It’s no big deal, Kayden. It’s not like I was in love with her. I liked her, but I didn’t shed a tear over her.”
“I can’t imagine you crying over any woman, Chains,” she says, her fingers still on the diamond.
“I cried buckets over my mom.”
“Your mom died?” she asks. She stops walking, turning to look at me, one hand still touching the diamond and one still joined with mine.
“A few years back. Cancer,” I respond, and the sorrow I see on her face isn’t make believe.
Kayden cares.
There’s so much to love about Kayden, but the fact that she cares about me slides through me and settles in a way that I’m pretty sure it changes something elemental inside of me… something that I never knew was there. My hand tightens on hers as emotion passes through me that I’m mostly afraid to name.
“I’m sorry, baby,” she replies, her voice gentle as she pulls her hand from the diamond I bought her and touches my face gently.
I memorize the look on her face. I never want to forget it, or the way she called me baby and the sweet tone in her voice when she did it.
I’m keeping her.
I don’t know how I’m going to work it out, but I’m not letting her go. Her father will have to kill me. If he manages that, I’ll go, but I’ll die knowing that I held the best thing in this world in my hands and that for a moment, she belonged to me and me alone.
Kayden.
“I’m okay, Babe. Mom was suffering so much, it was good she passed on. You get to a point when you see them hurting so much and nothing you do will help, so you are ready to let them go, because you know your pain is better than watching them suffer.”
Kayden goes up on the tips of her toes, stretching to kiss my lips. She doesn’t deepen the kiss, she just makes it sweet and gentle. When she pulls back she doesn’t leave. Instead she kisses my chest, right through my cut.
“What happened to your sisters?” she asks, while I’m still trying to deal with the sweetness of her and having trouble pushing my need for her away. I want her. I want her in ways that I don’t understand.
“Kelly lives in Arkansas with her husband Deke who is in the Army. Liz is a teacher in Tennessee and lives in Mom’s old house and Amy is in college at Lincoln Memorial in Tennessee.”
