Rocked (The Everyday Heroes World) - Julia Wolf Page 0,85
She even giggled a little when I said if I was choking on a gumball, she’d be the person I’d want to save me.
Eventually, we got out of the shower. I redressed, and Kat put on a tank and boxers. I stood in her bedroom, waiting for her to give me some indication of what she wanted me to do. Leroy nudged his big head against my leg, so I leaned down and pet him while eyeing Kat warily as she put away her work clothes.
She turned to me and rubbed her stomach. “Want to order a pizza? Or did I freak you out so much you’re ready to hit the road?”
“Pizza. I’ve seen some freaky shit, and you feeling something deeply wasn’t even remotely close.”
She reached down and scratched the top of Leroy’s head, her eyes on mine. Then she circled her arm around my waist in a hug, her cheek resting over my heart. The crank in my chest turned, making way for something that was too big to fit inside my current anatomy. It hurt, it was raw, but there was no stopping it. I hugged her tight, dipping my head to breathe her in. Leroy gave a little whine, then he gave up on us, trotting off to somewhere else in the house, his baseball mitt paws thumping against the hardwood.
“You feeling better now?” I asked.
“Yeah. I really needed to let that out, I think.” She pressed her face against me. “You being here made all the difference.”
“Nowhere else I’d want to be.”
Kat’s stomach rumbled against mine, making us both laugh. I kissed her once, then again before she went to find her phone to order pizza.
I settled on her couch, my back against the arm, feet crossed at the ankle on the cushions. I’d been counting on Kat having to sit on my lap, but she never did what I expected. Instead, she sat on the opposite end, her legs stretched out beside mine. Turned out, this position wasn’t so bad. I grabbed her feet and tucked them in my lap, digging my thumbs into the soles.
“Is Ellie with her dad?”
“Yeah.” She relaxed into the cushions. “If she had been here, I would have kept my shit together.”
“That’s not a question. I know you would have.” She had a scar on the top of her foot I’d never noticed. I ran my thumb along the unnaturally smooth skin, making her toes twitch.
“That’s from a piece of glass that went straight through my shoe.”
My eyes lifted to hers. “The accident?”
She nodded, her fingers finding the scar on her jaw. “I was driving that night. It was winter break and I was home from college. My mom called me to pick her up from a bar. She was too drunk to drive home and boyfriend number thirty had ditched her. Irony of all ironies, I went out to drive my drunk mother home from a bar and got hit by a drunk driver for my trouble.”
I winced, taken aback completely by what she’d told me. “Fuck, Kat, that’s…”
She nodded. “The other driver plowed through a red light and into the side of my car. My humerus had a compound fracture and my jaw was broken. The glass sliced through my skin like butter, and I was fully conscious for all of it, which I call bullshit on. I mean, if I had to be in a terrible accident, couldn’t I have at least been knocked out?”
My laugh was full of sadness. “I’m so sorry. I’m torn up just thinking about you going through that.”
“It changed me, fundamentally. Veego cheated while I was in the hospital, and I couldn’t deal. I couldn’t be heartbroken on top of being physically broken. So I...I shut him out. I shut off that part of me that cared about him.”
“That’s real fuckin’ understandable.” If I could go back in time and beat the shit out of Victor Domingo, the little shit, I would. I would never claim perfection, but cheating on his girl while she was in the hospital? That was low, even for me. “How the hell did you get knocked up by him?”
She snorted softly. “Lifetime friend, remember? I forgave him once I’d healed and had the mental capacity to even deal with those feelings. We got drunk, slept together once, and made our girl.”
“Alcohol...root of a lot of evil. Not that Ellie’s evil.”
She leaned her head to the side, her mouth curved in amusement. “For me it has been.