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“Only private room downstairs. As much as I wanted a bedroom, I could barely make the five steps to here; there was no way I was making it up the stairs with a bum leg and a passenger.”
“Kidnap victim,” I correct, throwing my hand up to shield my eyes when he flips on the light. Then he swings me down, and I stumble back a step.
“Consider this conversation your ransom then.”
“Clever.”
“Necessary,” he shoots back. “You’ve ignored me for over a week, Nala, after you blindsided me at my house and left without giving me a chance to defend myself or explain.”
“So here you are, making another decision for me, regardless of how I feel.”
“Nala, it wasn’t like that.” Mal pushes forward, using the counter and his crutch as leverage to move into my space. His scent—cologne, soap, shampoo, who knows—reaches out and wraps around me, so familiar it makes my throat close and my head light. I would know that scent everywhere, spicy yet mellow, something that’s all man.
“That night…shit, that entire year and all of the ones after it, I was a selfish prick, and you were a freshman in high school. I was an asshole, but not touching you? Not sayingyesto you? That was the one time I wasn’t being selfish.”
I shake my head, leaning away from him when he steps closer. “Stop, Mal, just stop.”
“No,” he says. “See, that’s the problem. Ever since that night, I’ve done nothing but stop, nothing but leave you alone and hope that somehow, this all went away. But it’s not going away, and neither is the way I feel. I’m sorry I hurt you,” he says, stealing my breath, and all of my rejections. “I’m sorry that I didn’t have the words to explain to you how I felt…why I had to leave.”
Sorry from Malcolm Brady. This is the last thing I expected. Being carted from the room against my will, embarrassed, and forced into a conversation I didn’t want to be in is not all that unexpected from the man in front of me. But an apology? I might faint in a second.
“Okay,” I say. He opens his mouth, closes it, opens it again and then laughs.
Shoving his free hand through his hair, he tugs a little and looks up at me from under his lashes. “Okay?”
I take a deep breath and nod. “Okay. I mean, I hate what you did, and I hate that you didn’t trust me with the truth, but…it was a long time ago. We can’t change it, so there’s no point in fighting about it.”
He nods, hand cupping his jaw while he studies me. “So where does that leave us?”
I take a small breath, and then try a smile. “We’re friends. I mean, we share the same friends, so that makes sense, right?”
Something crosses his face, an expression that I can’t read, and then he nods. “Friends.” Before I can smile, he turns and opens the door, adding “for now” over his shoulder before hobbling out and leaving me there, wondering if we cleared the air or made an even bigger mess of it.
