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After a while, I’m relieved when the conversation meanders to Rami’s work and then to Orpha’s mom, although I sense Marilla’s keen eyes on me all night long, even when I get a text from Kohl out of the blue, one that makes my heart race in trepidation until I reach his conciliatory words.
Indie, I don’t want to bother you.
I just want to tell I’m sorry for how things ended. I know the jealousy got too much. I shouldn’t have got so intense. I just didn’t expect to like you as much as I did.
I know I shouldn’t have pushed you to talk to your mom. That’s your decision and no one else’s.
I've been in therapy and it’s made me wish I could do things over, but I know I can’t, and that’s fine.
I just want you to know I’m sorry if I hurt you.
I hope one day we can be friends.
For my part, I’ll always be here if you need me. Kohl.
I sigh out, realizing he got caught up in trauma that had nothing to do with him.
I take a moment before responding.
There’s nothing to be sorry for.
And I’m sorry if I hurt you too.
Thanks so much for your message.
I hope we can be friends one day as well.
Take care.
Indie.
49
Greyson
My finger pushes in the black bell of my parents’ house as I try to ignore the surges of adrenaline flaring through my system as I ready myself for the upcoming onslaught of questions, none of which they will attempt to deliver with any degree of decency.
I take a moment to remind myself that my long-suffering fantasy of beating my father to a pulp in front of his wife is something I’d rather avoid for the sake of Indigo if no one else.
I have no doubt that chief on the list of their preoccupations will be this farce of an engagement to which they want me to commit, to a woman I feel nothing for, no less.
While once the fact that Gabriella submitted to my needs made her a tolerable candidate for marriage to a man as fucked-up as me, I certainly couldn’t go back to an arrangement so heinous after tasting Indigo’s skin on my tongue.
It’s only been a day since I dropped her back off at her place and my body has been restless ever since, certain I've left something behind somewhere. My need to protect has never been this acute. I thought I’d left that behind long ago, but apparently, she’s reignited that urge… and I can’t say it’s the most comfortable of feelings.
And despite the fact that I still feel this girl on my body, still taste her in my mouth, still see the color of her eyes everywhere I look, I am tormented by the thought that I am designed to hurt her; that I should not subject a woman as sensitive as her to a man hiding so many secrets, and concealing so much trauma that he barely knows who he even is some days.
A man who spends half his life feeling like a monster. Who hides the monster away from everybody but a select few…
I glance behind me at the black Bugatti in my father’s driveway before my attention is caught by the clicking of a lock, and the front door being opened by my parents’ long-suffering housekeeper.
“Hello, young man,” she sings, though I can tell she’s deliberately muting her tone so as not to attract my parents’ attention. You’d have thought that after working for them for almost ten years, they’d allow her to make a bit of noise, express her warm personality more freely.
Instead, she speaks to me in hushed tones when they’re around, as if she’s afraid of being heard at all, something I know full well that Indigo would not approve of if I do decide to introduce her. By rights, I shouldn’t, but my parents want her hidden away and that is not acceptable to me, even though I’m aware that I have no idea down which path I’m taking her.
All I do know is that every cell in my body now hungers for her to the point of minute-by-minute distraction, a fact that riddles me with fear.
“Hey, Dorothy,” I smile, giving her a hug before she reaches up for me, grabbing hold of my lapel.
