She had hurt...him, when all he had wanted was to...have her.
And knowing that hurt her, too.
Chapter 6
THE SHOWER WAS RUNNINGtoo hot, and Kyara couldn’t bring herself to turn the knob down.
She just stood there, with her forehead pressed against the cool tile, and the water beating against her shoulders, and her hands not really doing anything because soap and shampoo seemed to require a kind of decision-making that she wasn’t capable of right now.
Don’t think about it.
Don’t think about it.
Don’t.
But of course, the moment she told herself not to think about it, the only thing she could think about wasit, anditwasn’t even Cyrus.
It was her boss’s face.
The way Mr. Havington had looked at her in the elevator after she said it. After she lied. After she opened her mouth and the worst lie she had ever told in her entire life just came tumbling out, all because she couldn’t bear admitting that her relationship with Cyrus was, in fact, exactly as boring as her boss had said it was.
We don’t have a boring relationship at all because we kiss all the time.
Kyara made a small sound against the tile, and the sound was somewhere between a whimper and a laugh, and she didn’t know which was worse.
Because the worst part wasn’t even the lie.
The worst part was that her chest had been hurting since last night, and the hurt had nothing to do with Cyrus and everything to do with the look on her boss’s face in the second before he turned away from her and told Elbert to drive her home. It wasa look she had never seen on Mr. Havington before, not in three years, not in thirty-seven months, not ever, and her brain had been replaying it on a loop ever since.
Please drive Ms.Dunn home, Elbert. That will be all.
She had beenMs.Dunnagain. NotKyara. Notkyria.
And her heart hurt so, so bad every time she remembered it.
Just stop it, Kyara! Just stop.
She turned the knob down with shaking fingers and reached for the shampoo, because if she didn’t start moving, she was going to be late for work, and if she was late for work, she would have to face her boss with red eyes on top of everything else, and that—
No, oh no, no.
She wasn’t going to think about that either.
She was going to take a shower, and she was going to put on her clothes, and she was going to take the train two stations out, and she was going to walk into the diner she had been walking into every weekday morning for three years, and she was going to do what she should have done a long, long time ago.
That was the plan.
That had to be the plan, because if it wasn’t the plan, then she had no idea what she was going to do with the way her body kept aching whenever she pictured the look on her boss’s face going cold and far away because ofher.
How strange.
The thought drifted up from somewhere underneath the water as she rinsed shampoo out of her hair.
I’m about to meet Cyrus for the first time since learning he’s been cheating on me for the past two months, and all I can think about is my boss.
It’s crazy.
And confusing.
