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Guilt.
But had Kayla grown closer to Paige only because of her guilt? Or had Kayla truly come to care about her?
Squeezing her eyes shut, Paige refused to think about that. She felt sore and tired. Drained.
She’d be lying if she said she didn’t feel any anger, or blame, or betrayal where her best friend was concerned. She did. But she was so weary of those emotions and didn’t want to think about them. She’d deal with them later.
Falling asleep with a numb kind of emptiness inside her, Paige dreamed of Logan and how she’d held him after she’d forgiven him at the Christmas Tree farm. But in the dream, she didn’t stop with a hug. She kissed him. And he kissed her back. Then Trace came along and caught them. With a roar, he launched himself at Logan, and the two started to fight.
She woke on a guilty gasp, curled in the same tight fetal position as she’d been when she’d conked out. Sunlight streamed through her window, telling her it was morning. Christmas.
She dragged herself from bed, shuffled through the house, past her dad still unconscious on the couch, and into the kitchen.
It was always a test for her, a challenge she felt compelled to pass, whenever she entered this room. She’d never forget the morning she’d found her mother in here and she’d never like crossing this floor—new tile or not—so she did it as often as possible, on purpose, to show herself she could.
Paige opened the refrigerator and pulled out a carton of eggs, trying to think of happier times when she’d seen her mom hum as she cooked instead of seeing the phantom image of her dead body. She was scraping the last of the scrambled eggs she fixed onto a second plate when her father stumbled in, bleary eyes blood shot and face unshaven.
Forcing a smile, she called, “You’re just in time. Breakfast is ready.”
“Already got my breakfast,” he answered in a guttural voice as he opened the refrigerator.
When he came up with a beer, Paige clenched her teeth but refused to show her irritation.
“How about you not drink today,” she suggested with an encouraging grin. “It’s Christmas.”
“How about you get off my back,” he sneered, raising an eyebrow in challenge as he looked her in the eye and intentionally popped off the cap. “It’s Christmas.” Then he tipped his head back and took a long guzzle.
Sighing quietly as she forfeited the fight, Paige set down the spatula she’d been holding. She’d learned a lot about herself and a lot about
grieving in the past couple months. Her group at Granton had healed her in ways she hadn’t even known she’d been hurt. And she just wanted her father to experience a little bit of the same ease from his own suffering.
If she didn’t at least try to reach him, no one else would, so she set her shoulders firmly. “Dad, I know this is the first year we’ve had to go through the holidays without Mom but—”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” His voice was harsh and commanding, leaving her no room to respond without outright pushing. He flung a single glare at her and turned away to leave the kitchen.
She followed him. “Well, I do. You are the only family I have left, Paul Zukowski. And I can’t just give up on you the way you’ve given up on yourself.”
“I said I don’t want to talk about it!” he roared. He swung around with his bottle pointed at her.
She must have miscalculated how close she’d moved to him, though. Instead of pointing, he cracked her in the cheekbone hard with the side of the glass. The bottle shattered from the force of his swing, and Paige was pitched to the floor, momentarily blinded as pain streaked across her jaw.
Crouched on her hands and knees among the broken glass, she trembled for a good second before sitting up and hesitantly lifting her hand to her face. When her fingers came away wet and sticky—and red, she gaped at them before looking up at her father.
He stared back, obviously dumbfounded. Then he shook his head, bunched his jaw with rage, and yelled, “Damn it, now! Why were you standing so close?”
Too flustered to answer, Paige moved her mouth without actually speaking. But the action shot white-hot heat through her jaw, so she winced and cupped her cheek to keep it still.
After running his hands through his hair and looking wild and undecided about what to do, her dad belted out a couple more curses and staggered from the room.
Paige remained on the floor, sitting only a few feet from where her mother had last lay. When a drop of blood splattered to the tile, her teeth began to chatter.
Pushing clumsily upright, she tripped toward the counter and grabbed a paper towel. She hurried to her room, shut the door silently, and collapsed onto her bed. The mirror next to her closet beckoned her, but she refused to look, couldn’t bear to see how bad it was.
The injury throbbed through her head, making one side of her face feel swollen and inflamed.
She blinked repeatedly. At least her vision wasn’t harmed.
When her cell phone rang, she jumped, quickly checking the ID. She hoped maybe Bailey or Tess was calling to wish her a Merry Christmas. She needed a dose of Granton like she couldn’t believe. But when she saw Kayla’s name, she closed her eyes and sniffed.
