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32
CADE
A WEEK LATER
“You’re a fuckingmoron.”
I squint at the bright light as Kitty drags open the shades in my room and lets in the punishing sun that’s hell-bent on melting my eyeballs. “Shut the fucking curtains, Kitty!” I growl.
“No. You deserve the pain.” She kicks my foot. “You suck.”
“Thank you,” I mumble.
“That wasn’t a compliment.”
“Well, I’m taking it as one.”
She huffs. “Go and get her.”
“Go and get who?” I yawn as I cover my face with a pillow.
“Belle!”
There’s a pain in my chest that’s worse than the one in my eyes.
I shove it aside like I’ve been shoving it aside since Belle left. “Kitty, she didn’t sleep in a week. Being here was bad for her health.”
“She napped at Ma’s.”
“That’s not enough for her to function. Something wasn’t right for her here.” I rub my temples where it feels like the seven dwarfs are attacking my optic nerves with their pickaxes. “New York was bad for her. She wanted to be around her family.”
God, I was hoping she’d start to think ofmeas family.
“And you’re just going to settle for that?”
“What else can I do?”
“You can stop being a dickwad and go and get her. God, maybe if this place didn’t look like a room at the YMCA, she’d have felt more at home—”
“Thisisn’ther home. L.A. is. And my lack of furniture doesn’t make up for the shit I’ve done—”
“Home is where the heart is,” she interrupts.
I toss the pillow at her. “Are you going to start quoting more proverbs at me?”
“If it’ll get you to do something, sure. A stitch in time will save your ass because I’ll beat it black and blue if you don’t get on a plane tonight. How about that?”
“Original,” I mock. “She bought a ticket without even talking to me first, which says it all. I lied to her, Kitty. I failed her. She even had to deal with her father; I didn’t put that asshole down for her. I don’t blame her for leaving. Especially after…”
“After?” Kitty prompts, though her scowlhaslessened.
“Some days, I’d get back from work and she’d be pretty much catatonic. She didn’t want to open up to me, and the moment I thought she was reaching out, she told me she was leaving.” I don’t tell her that she offered to pay me back for the hospital bill. As if I’d take her goddamn money. But that sealed it for me—a reminder of yet another way I’d fucking failed her. Disheartened but proud of her, I rasp, “She obviously decided to stop wasting her time with me and so she should. She deserves better.”
Kitty’s mouth gapes open. “Who are you and what did you do with my brother?”
I ignore her to state, “Do I miss her? Of course I do.” I growl, slamming my hand into the comforter. “But I’m not about to put her in a bad place, not when she’s got herself out of it. You didn’t see her when she was like that. I did. The last thing I want is for her to start using again because of what I did.”
“How can you read between the linesso wellandstillmess this up?” she snaps.
