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My mouth suddenly feels like a dried-out husk, and I sit, staring at the floor, as he starts the cleanup process. Most of the presents we gave out today didn’t make it out of the room before being torn open. I can still hear the kids’ laughter ringing in my ears. So much joy and pain all mixed together. Inside, I don’t know what to do with the conflicting emotions.
Standing, I walk over to one of the cabinets I spotted a roll of garbage bags in earlier and rip one off. I shake it out as I return to Kyle whose arms are full of balled-up wrapping paper. “Why do you do this every year if it’s so hard on you?”
He doesn’t look at me as he dumps the paper into the trash bag. “It’s a lot harder on those kids and their families than me, don’t you think?”
“You know,” I say, somewhat annoyed with his attitude, no matter how justified it may be, “just because you’re in a mood, it doesn’t mean you can take it out on me. I’m being nice here, which is a lot more than you deserve from me.”
Those dark eyes flip up and the intensity of his stare nearly knocks me back. “Deserve? I treated you like gold and you dumped me in front of everyone at school over nothing.”
“You were with another girl,” I growl, doing my level best to keep my voice and my attitude in check. A hospital full of children didn’t need to play witness to my fucked-up past drama.
“It was a kiss, and one I didn’t invite. I told you that.”
“It was a lot more than that,” I sneer. “Everyone told me that.”
“Haven’t you ever heard that you shouldn’t believe everything you hear?”
“So, I wasn’t supposed to believe my friends over you, who freely admitted to kissing another girl in a drunken stupor? Because I’m just supposed to believe that it didn’t go any further than that when you probably couldn’t remember anything the next morning. Right.” I nod, glaring at him briefly before dropping the bag at his feet. “I don’t know why I insist on torturing myself. I should have left the moment you walked through the door.”
There’s a challenge in Kyle’s eyes when he says, “Then why didn’t you?”
My mouth opens and closes as I grasp for a valid response. Why didn’t I walk away? I told myself it was because I refused to be run off, that seeing him pine after me would be the perfect vengeance...but now I wonder.
Did I stay because I needed to see him as much as I needed him to see me? Did I feel as if I had something to prove to him?
“Like you said, the kids and their families are more important.” Disturbed by my current, ongoing inner monologue and that knowing way Kyle’s looking at me, I step back and tell him, “I’m sure you can finish up here.”
Turning on my heel, I move to leave when I feel his hand bind around my arm, pulling me back. “Where do you think you’re going?” he growls.
Stunned and quickly growing angry, I say, “Home. I don’t want to be around you anymore.”
For one long moment, our eyes dart back and forth between one another, assessing, and then Kyle shocks the shit out of me.
With an intensity in his voice and expression I’ve never seen in real life before, he yanks me to him, my breasts slamming into his chest, and his other hand winds into my hair, holding me in place. His gaze is firmly planted on my gasping mouth when he says, “I’m not letting you run away from me this time.”
In a split second, without any time to decide one way or another, he’s kissing me...and I’m utterly consumed.
It takes a moment or two for me to get ahold of myself. When I do, I’m completely overcome, too many thoughts and emotions swimming through my head to pin down just one. This entire day is a culmination of mixed-up emotions, and I’m overwhelmed by it all to the point I don’t know whether I’m coming or going anymore.
In a flash of clarity, I gasp and shove Kyle away. “What the hell are you doing?”
He releases me, eyes glazed, and I stumble back from his embrace, swiping the back of my hand across my mouth as if I need to get the taste of him off me.
I don’t. My entire body is crying out for more. But I can’t allow him to shove his way back into my life—not after what he put me through. Months, I cried over this man. Months, I spent trying to forget about him. I never did. Years later, and his image still sits in my bedroom, reminding me of the past, of what never could be.
And now, in one impassioned, thoughtless act, I feel as if the fragile façade I’ve created has been irrevocably damaged.
Possibly destroyed.
I’m trembling as I stare accusingly back at him, wanting to spit all manner of nasty insults in order to prove to us both that I don’t want him. That I hate him.
But no words will come forth, leaving me a heaving, breathless mess.
Hurt and confusion and a softness I can’t put a name to enter his eyes, and Kyle steps forward, his hand outstretched. “Sunny—”
I’m shaking my head violently before my name fully passes his lips. “No. No!” A hiccup followed by a sob rips from my throat, horrifying me. My hand flies to my mouth as if to try to prevent the onslaught of emotion, but it’s too late. I back away, frantic to leave. I’m aware of what I must look like: a crazed animal running from slaughter. It all the more reason I need to get out of here.
Holding my hand up in a stop motion stops Kyle in his tracks, but I can’t unsee that abject pain in his eyes. He wants to touch me, to comfort me, but no way will I allow him. Never again.
The exit is a mere few feet away, and I dash toward it, uncaring of the belongings I’ve left behind...or my dignity. I just need to escape, to put this day behind me, to wall it off in the dark recesses of my mind and never, ever revisit it.
I need to reclaim that inner calm I’ve been holding onto with an iron fist since that fateful night.
Because, honestly, Kyle Payne never left my heart. Not for one. Single. Second.
