taking in the curve of his lips and noticing the way they’re slightly apart.
Tempting.
He is tempting.
Every little thing about him is suddenly tempting.
I’ve been love starved. Attention starved. Sex starved. That’s why I’m behaving like this.
And now I wonder how his mouth tastes. My beating, crazy, lonely heart demands to know.
I’m convinced he’s back to playing games with me.
She’s not his girlfriend.
It’s supposed to be good news.
Why is that, Kyra?
“Those boxes look pretty well lined up to me. The entire storeroom is symmetrically in sync. You should be proud of your OCD.” His voice is low, and I can feel him standing behind me, not because he’s touching any part of me, but because I can sense it. I’m like a barometer, sensitive to the change in temperature which just shot up. Inhaling what I hope is a good dose of calm, I try to keep calm. “I take pride in my work.”
“What made you think she was my girlfriend?”
He’s not going to let this go. “You seemed really upset,” I answer.
“She’s a good friend.”
“She must be someone special.” I stare him right in the eyes, as if I am X-raying him to find the truth.
“She is.”
“How is she?”
“She’s getting better, but she might suffer from partial amnesia. That will be hard.” He bites his lip, stares away, looking pensive and sad. “She’ll recover, but it’s going to take some time.”
“She’ll recover. That’s the main thing. That’s what you have to focus on.”
His face crumples. “She doesn’t remember the accident. She doesn’t even remember that evening or what she did.”
My mouth falls open. “That’s tragic. That’s awful. I mean, maybe it’s a blessing that she can’t remember the event, but to forget a chunk of her life like that. It’s awful.”
“Sometimes it’s better to erase the things that hurt too much to remember.” I’m not even sure that he’s talking about his friend now. He seems to have zoned out.
And all of a sudden, I don’t even know if I believe him. Even if she’s not his girlfriend, he’s so cut up that it doesn’t make sense. Is he lying to me? My last boyfriend broke my heart so badly that I’ve not been able to put it back together. There are cracks in it that will never mend. I don’t want to fall for another liar.
BRANDON
Sometimes people want to forget. Sometimes it’s better to forget because remembering is too painful. It’s something that most people won’t understand. Kyra gets too close to the truth without even realizing. I’m scared that she sees inside me and knows every single demon that haunts me.
Seeing Emma’s empty desk, and finding myself becoming increasingly irritated by the new PA makes me want to be at Redhill instead of at Hawks Enterprises. At first I found it safe and comforting, being around Kyra but lately, coming here isn’t working out so well for me.
It’s bad enough that I have to put up with the homeless food nights and seeing Yvette and her children. She brings them with her and it seems to have become a regular thing. I hate that it forces me to face the things I would rather forget.
I have to come clean. Or quietly slip away.
I spend the next hour talking to Fredrich and Simona, and answering their questions about Emma, without giving too much away. Kyra isn’t stupid. She knows I’m being vague.
They start talking about the city hall event on Friday.
“Will you come, Brad?” Simona asks me.
“Uh … I don’t think so.”
“Come on, dude. It’ll be an awesome night.” Fredrich seems to be eager for me to come along.
“I’m not up to it, sorry.”
“Don’t force him,” Kyra chimes in, throwing me a sympathetic glance.
At the end of the day when the others have left, she comes over to my desk. “That was nice of you, sending food boxes back with Yvette on the night of Elias’s fight. She told me you did that.”
I slot my pen into the desk organizer, unable to meet her gaze even though I know she is staring at me. “We had lots of food left over.”
“But still, it was nice of you. Her kids are still really traumatized from—”
I hold my hand up, wanting her to stop. I don’t want to know. I already can’t sleep well and I don’t need to know what hell Yvette and her kids have suffered. “It’s fine. Really.”
“Okay,” she mumbles softly. I’m aware that I’ve been giving her wrong signals all day. Knowing the type of person she