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“Fabian?”
I raise my head, and she’s got a bowl of soapy water, a pair of scissors, a wad of cotton wool, and a tube of ointment in her hands. She shifts the books to place what she’s holding on the nightstand, and I smile at the warmth in her eyes. Then she leans down, her face moving toward mine.A kiss.
“If you ever slash your arm like that again, I’m leaving you to bleed out,” she says against my mouth, and I cough up a rusty laugh. She’s so close, blonde lashes and clear white around her eyes, smelling like summer and raspberries. Her lips are soft and warm.
“You wouldn’t talk to me,” I say, pulling back. As if that justifies anything.
“I would have talked to you eventually.” Her eyes scan mine. “I’m serious, Fabian: You could have died if we’d made one mistake with you. Impaired hand movement, nerve damage. I know you want to live life on the edge, but there’s testing your limits and there’s idiocy. Slashing an artery …” She takes a shaky inhale as she sinks down again at my hip. “It was shocking, seeing her in your bed. I needed to get to a place where I felt ready to speak to you.”
“I’m a lunatic. I’m sorry.”
She nods at me. “I’m sorry too. Sorry I didn’t talk to you.”
We stare at each other as the water gurgles in the pipes through the building.
“Talk to me about what happened with this David guy.”
She groans and rolls her lips together, but I squeeze her hand, and she nods, taking a deep breath.
“We were together for two years in college, engaged actually, so … yeah.”
Engaged?My stomach turns over. Holy shit.
She shakes her head. “He wassucha charmer, a real master at reading people and giving them what they wanted. But it took me a while to realize that. I found out he used prostitutes in the most prosaic way possible: There was a card in the pocket of his jeans that I was putting into the wash with some of my clothes. I rang the number on the card.” Kate looks down at her nails. “I didn’t know what to say, so I just pretended to be his personal assistant, arranging a time for him. She asked me if I wanted the ‘stuff he’d had before,’ and I was so horrified I just said yes. I wanted to ask how many times he’d been in the past and what this ‘stuff’ was, but I couldn’t find the courage.”
She glances at my face, like she doesn’t know how much to tell me, but fuck I want to know everything about this asshole and what he did. Sympathy burns through me. “Understandable,” I say, and she takes a sharp inhale.
“I just couldn’t believe it, you know? I mean we were really close, like you and me.” She gestures back and forward between us, and then she winces as I close my eyes, pain sharp in my chest. “I wanted there to be some silly explanation, like it was for his dad, but I knew as soon as I handed the card to him that he knew what it was and what it meant. He was so angry with himself. He said he had a death wish to fuck up everything good in his life.”
A long groan leaks out of me. I don’t want there to be any parallels with my behavior and this David guy, but the idea of doing something that fucks everything up … that feels so familiar,goddammit.
“I even felt sorry for him.” She laughs. “Sorry that he’d been found out. That’s crazy.”
I shake my head, jaw cracking with the effort of not punching the nearest wall. “It’s not crazy, Kate, when you care about someone.” I try and swallow it all down. “It’s part of why I helped Nadine. When you’re a loyal person and you’ve been close to someone, it’s incredibly hard to turn your back on them, no matter how badly they behave.”
She blinks at me, eyes watery. “I asked him why he’d done it, and I remember this so clearly, he said, ‘You’re not going to like what I’m going to say, but I need to be honest.’ You see, he was always saying stuff like that.” She breathes in deeply and bends her head, staring at the covers, so I squeeze her hand and she looks up at me. “I just don’t know if he ever was honest with me,” she whispers.
I shake my head. I’d bet my ass he wasneverfucking honest with her.
“He told me that he’d used prostitutes all his life. His dad, too, and it was his dad who took him the first time, when he wasfifteen. God, I felt so sick. He said it was like gambling: exciting and addictive, the unknown, the thrill. He swore that this was the first time since he’d met me that he’d been, but I knew from what she’d asked me on the phone that he was lying.”
That fucking slimeball!
“But being the stupid little analyst that I am I wanted to understand what he got from it that I didn’t give him, so I asked if it was better than sex with me.”
Oh my God. And she thinks she lacks courage? “It’s not stupid, Kate. I think that’s the first question any sensible person would want to ask, but they’re probably not brave enough to fucking ask it.”
Her eyes shoot to mine, and I squeeze her hand.
“Did he tell you?”
She shakes her head. “He said that they did things that he wouldn’t, couldn’t, ask me to do.”
“Figures. These are the kinds of guys that get girls to do sick things.”
She stares at me. “Holy shit. You think?”
“I know.”
