The Lost (Celestial Blues, Book 2) - By Vicki Pettersson Page 0,51
get worked up over another man’s aspirations. He wouldn’t pummel Dennis because of that look. He’d pummel him on principle.
“So let me just say this,” Dennis said, and Kit held up a hand.
“You really shouldn’t.”
He knew that, of course, and just smiled. “Ever since the Chambers case, when you popped back onto my mental radar, bringing this world”—he motioned around—“back with you, I feel more alive than I have in years. You reminded me of how much this meant to me. Sometimes I wonder why I ever gave it up.”
Yes, she could see that. He looked fully alive in his cotton and denim, errant glitter winking off one cheek. He lived as she did, too, with nostalgic admiration for the past, but feet firmly planted in the here and now. It was something Kit could appreciate tonight, while all alone but for her girlfriends and cherry-infused Maker’s Mark zipping into her veins. Besides, when it came down to it, a charged moment between longtime friends meant little.
Kit, very simply, was in love with Grif.
Hesitating, she finally placed a hand on Dennis’s arm. “Thank you for telling me, but . . .”
“I know,” he said, rising so that her hand fell away. “I just wanted you to know, too.”
She smiled. “I’m glad you didn’t give it up. All this, I mean.”
“Me, too. Though it does make me wonder.”
“Wonder what?” she asked, head tilted up.
Lifting her hand, he dropped a kiss atop her fingertips, his own giving a light squeeze before he let it drop. “What else I gave up too easily.”
And Kit had nothing at all to say to that.
Without another word, Dennis rejoined the gearheads at his table, leaving her gaping in his wake. Fleur materialized almost instantly.
“So, that’s interesting,” her friend said, and Kit knew that despite Layla’s mesmerizing act, Fleur had seen everything.
“No, it’s not,” Kit replied quickly.
“But it could be.”
“Sure.” Kit, mobile again, lunged for her drink. “If it’d happened, I don’t know, six months ago.”
“Because of the man who’s torturing you with his absence tonight?” Fleur asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Just because he’s not here right now doesn’t mean he’s gone.” The most important people and things in life rarely needed to be present to sustain their hold. “Grif is the first thing I think of in the morning and my last lingering thought at night. He’s burrowed so deeply inside of me that he could take up permanent residence there. I couldn’t get him out even if I wanted to.”
“Okay,” Fleur said, waving away the deep declaration of love. “But you shouldn’t look like you want to call for an exorcism when you say that.”
Kit drew back. Did she?
“Wanna talk about what’s really bothering you?” Fleur said, now that the two of them were alone. Lil had disappeared backstage to congratulate Layla.
Kit held her friend’s knowing gaze. “Not really.”
“Which is why you must,” Fleur said practically. “You gotta exorcise your worries, cast them out like demons.”
The word made Kit think of Scratch, and she shuddered. But Fleur was right, and she also realized that this was really why she’d come here tonight. To commune and connect. If circle skirts and cherry tattoos were her oxygen, her friends were her lungs.
“Grif isn’t just wandering randomly,” she told Fleur, leaning forward on her elbows, wanting to get the story out before the next act began. She had time. The stage kitten was still flirting with the crowd. “He’s researching the murder of another woman. It’s a very old case, half a century, actually, but it’s something very . . . personal to him. I know I should want answers for him, for them both, but he’s . . . I don’t know. Obsessed.”
“How obsessed?” Fleur asked when Kit looked away.
Kit thought about it for a moment, then lifted her gaze. “We can be sitting, having a perfectly nice dinner,” she said, not adding that it was one she’d spent hours planning, shopping for, and prepping, “and he’ll suddenly get this faraway look. The food disappears—the textures, the taste. The candlelight no longer touches his eyes. The hand holding his fork falls still.”
Fleur listened intently, but said nothing.
“Or we’ll be watching a movie and I’ll feel a kind of shift, and even though he hasn’t moved at all I’ll just look over and he’ll be gone, same way. That seeing, but not seeing. And I know he’s with her.”
Fleur wrinkled her nose. “With this old woman? This old case?”
Kit nodded, and caught pity crossing Fleur’s gaze before it was