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CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Kelsey opened the door and stepped back, making room for Dex to enter. As he did, he saw Mr. Darcy standing at the end of the hall, giving him a suspicious look. He and Mr. D were friends, so the dog was probably picking up on Kelsey’s tension.
Dex had picked up that she was drunk—or on the way to it, at least. It surprised him; he’d seen her with a glass or bottle in her hand often enough, but he’d never seen her drunk, and she wasn’t the partying type.
She was alone on New Year’s Eve, she’d obviously been crying, and she was drunk. Didn’t take much to know who was to blame for all three.
He couldn’t clearly remember what the fuck had happened. He remembered a nuclear explosion of jealousy. He remembered beating hell out of Zach. He remembered saying something to Kelsey afterward that made tears well up in her eyes and made her turn from him and leave.
Actually, that was what the fuck had happened. Except that those memories were like pages in a book he’d flipped through. They didn’t feel like they belonged to him.
That was sickeningly familiar. If the trigger had gone on longer, he’d have lost time completely. In the middle of the fucking clubhouse. He’d never live that shit down. If the Bulls knew about that part of him, he’d lose his kutte. Just like he’d lost his Marines uniform.
Vividly, he remembered standing alone in the kitchen, coming down from that rage and understanding how close he’d come to losing everything.
The smart play would have been to let Kelsey go. She’d given up on him, walked away from him, and he should have let her. He’d tried to let her. He’d slipped out of the clubhouse and gone home to his pack, tried to focus on the small life he’d made, one in which his various demons were on ice. Fuck, he’d thought he’d found control of himself. He hadn’t lost time in a couple of years, and now, since Kelsey, he’d ‘gone over,’ as she put it, or come close to it, at least three times.
He didn’t know why, but it seemed she was as dangerous to him as he was to her. So he should have stayed away.
But he’d been restless and miserable, needing to see her, to make sure she was okay, needing to apologize, needing to be with her. Justneedingher in every way. He’d paced and paced, picked up his keys and put them back down, over and over and over, until the dogs were agitated and he was about to come straight out of his skin.
So here he was.
And here she was, leaning against the door she’d just closed, wearing what had to be the cutest pajamas ever made for a grown woman. What she wore wasn’t even pajamas—it wasjammies, the grown-up version of the little zip-up suits toddlers wore to bed. A fuzzy blue zip-up suit with snowmen all over it.
The silver chain she always wore, with the three small charms, caught his eye where it lay in the gap of the zipper. The tiny gemstone glinted in the gleam from the light over their heads. Following a whim, he came close and lifted the charms on his fingers. She gasped softly as his fingers brushed her skin.
“Tell me about this,” he said. “You never take it off.”
“You want to talk about my necklace?”
He lifted his gaze to look her right in the eyes. “To start.”
“They’re gifts from my father.” She took the pendant from his fingertips and tucked it in so it lay on her chest again. Then she drew the zipper up and hid the necklace—and noticed what she was wearing. She stared down at herself for a few seconds and sighed heavily.
“I think you look beautiful,” he said.
“What do you want from me, Dex?”
Briefly, she’d called him by the name his mother had given him, and it had felt like a caress. It hadn’t felt like him, exactly, but like he could become the man she saw. But then he’d proved to her that he was only Dex, the name he’d earned.
“I want … I want you to see me. To understand me.”
“I’ve been trying to understand you. I thought … I thought I did.”
“I know. But you need to know some things about me before you can.”
“Okay. Let’s talk.” She pushed off the door and walked past him down the hall and to her living room. She didn’t bounce off the walls as she went, but he didn’t think her steps were entirely steady, either.
He followed. The room was dark, only the television and the gas fire providing light. Her Christmas blanket lay in a pile on her sofa. On the coffee table was an open bottle of champagne, about half gone—the source of the drunkenness—and an empty frosting tub with a tablespoon in it.
She saw him looking and gathered all that up. On her way to the kitchen, she asked, “Do you want something to drink? There’s vodka and white wine. Or Diet Coke. Or orange juice. Or water.”
“I’m good.” He sat down at the end of the sofa. Mr. D came over and put his front paws on Dex’s leg. “Hey, bud,” he said softly and gave the dog’s ears a good scratch.
Kelsey came back, and Mr. D went over to get a scratch from her before he settled into his bed. After she turned off the television and switched on a lamp, she sat at the opposite end of the sofa and tucked herself in under the blanket. Then she simply looked at him. Waiting for him to say what he needed to say.
This chilly, distant girl was not the Kelsey he knew. He couldn’t say she’d ever been like this to him or around him. She was a forgiving girl, a benefit-of-the-doubt girl, a second-chance girl. But now she was judge and jury, waiting to hear his testimony before she decided his fate.
