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“I want to be your friend, Elara.” His voice is like velvet in my ear and goose bumps immediately erupt across my neck. “I just… I needed some time.” He releases my arm, allowing me to take a step back and put a little distance between us.
“No, I get it.” I brush it off like I couldn’t care less.
“It doesn’t seem like you do.”
“You don’t know me well enough to assume you have any idea what I think or feel.” I stand my ground, convinced that pushing him away is the right thing.
He’s already proven that he can bounce in and out of my life with little regard for how that makes me feel. And even though the rational side of me knows that he was going through his own grieving process, the other part of me is pissed for reasons I don’t fully understand.
“Fair enough.” He rocks back on his heels.
“I really should go. It was good seeing you again, Kane.” This time I manage to get a couple of steps in before his voice has me coming to an abrupt stop.
“It’s difficult for me to be near you.”
I don’t turn around to look at him. I can’t.
“Why?” I ask, my back still to him.
“Because my brother loved you and every time I look at you all I see is the life he’ll never have,” he admits, defeat clear in his voice. “Because you make me feel things I don’t have any right to feel. Because when I’m with you…” he trails off, not finishing his sentence. “The night of the funeral you pulled me out of a very dark place. You smiled at me and suddenly everything felt different. I couldn’t handle the guilt that left me with. I’m sorry for leaving the way I did but I panicked.”
“I guess I know the feeling,” I admit, slowly turning back toward Kane. I couldn’t help but wish he didn’t look so much like Kam, yet at the same time wishing he looked a little more like him.
“Idowant to be your friend, Elara. You were the person my brother loved most in the world. I feel like I owe it to him to make sure you’re taken care of. I just couldn’t do that before now.”
“I don’t need someone to take care of me,” I interject. “I just needed a friend.”
“I know that. And I’m sorry I couldn’t be that for you. But I can now. I came back for you.”
“For me?” I question, confusion clear on my face.
“I regretted leaving the way I did the moment I left. But I had an assignment in L.A. and it gave me some much needed time to process a few things. It took me a while but I’m here now.”
“Well, I’m sorry you wasted the trip back because I’m leaving. Like right now,” I say, gesturing to the car sitting a couple of feet behind me.
I hate how dismissive I sound. I hate that I feel like I have to push away the only person that has been able to bring me even a semblance of peace since Kam died. But I hate how he left even more. No matter how irrational or unfair that may seem, I can’t pretend like him leaving the way he did–when I needed him the most–didn’t have some effect on me, because it did.
“Just like that?” he questions.
“Just like that,” I confirm. “Look, we don’t have to make that night more than it was. We were both sick with grief and for a brief moment we were able to give each other a little reprieve. That’s all it was. We weren’t friends when Kamden was alive and we don’t have to be now. So whatever you’re thinking–don’t.”
“Do you always do that?” A slow smile spreads across his face. It’s the same smile Kam used to give me when I would nervously ramble.
“Do what?” I swallow hard.
“Assume you know exactly what someone else is thinking?”
“That’s not what I’m doing,” I object.
“Isn’t it?” he questions. “Did you ever consider that maybeIlike you, Elara? That maybeIenjoy being around you? That maybe that one night with you was the only time I’ve felt alive since Kam died?”
“But you left,” I say, having trouble finding my words.
“And I told you why. I just needed some time.”
“Well I’m sorry but now I need time,” I say, my hands knotting together the way they always do when I’m anxious. “Because you’re not the only one that felt a certain way that night. In a weird way being near you was like having a piece of Kamden back and that’s not fair to you or to him.”
“I’m not my brother.”
