While You Were Creeping - Poppy Rhys Page 0,48
regrettably snorted, which was disgusting in my current state.
“I mean it.” His fingers gave my chin a squeeze. And then he did the most startling, yet comforting, thing. He cupped my face, carefully brushing the cold tears off my cheeks with his thumbs while I stared up at him.
I’d been mistaken. It wasn’t pity in his eyes. It was only kindness. Maybe even a little buried rage if his grimace was any clue.
“They don’t deserve your time. They don’t even deserve the pleasure of your company.”
I shook my head, sarcastically mumbling, “Because I’m such a gift.”
“You’re damn right.” He smirked before his expression turned sincere. “You’re amazing Holly. This flawed, quirky, amazing woman.”
Why did my heart speed up? His words replayed in my head. Again. And again.
Flawed, quirky, amazing.
He said those words with such earnestness, they burned into me. They stamped all over my heart what I already knew about Kye.
What I forced myself to deny, to avoid at all costs, to pretend wasn’t real...
I loved him.
Against my better judgment and beyond all reason.
I love you. I love you, my silent voice screamed inside my head.
I was in love with Kye and I was doomed because I couldn’t free him. Didn’t know how and didn’t know if it was even possible.
This relationship—real or fake—was on a ticking timer to its imminent demise and there was no emergency exit off this road to misery.
“You’re freezing. Come on, let’s get you inside.”
My nerves instantly frayed. “Kye, I can’t go back in there. Please don’t make me go back in there.”
“The lobby’s empty,” he assured. “They went back to the party.”
A nervous sound eked in the back of my throat and my teeth started chattering. I allowed him to guide me back into the lodge.
“Your toes are going to fall off, you idiot,” he softly chided, and I blew out an exhausted laugh. I sat on the bench he brought me to.
“Can we get some towels over here,” Mom asked after stopping a staff member, and rushing toward us. “Honey, are you okay? You’re shivering.”
“Guess I really should’ve grabbed my shoes and coat.”
“I’ve got it!” Aunt Gretta came scurrying across the lobby with all my stuff, and I really did feel like an idiot, running into the night without my shoes.
Kye draped my coat over my shoulders before carefully drying my feet with the towels brought to us.
“Holly—”
“Kye—”
I shook my head, cleaning up my nose with a tissue. He reached up to cup my cheek again and I curled my fingers around his wrist to keep it there.
“Thirty, twenty-nine, twenty-eight!” the crowd in the reception hall shouted, counting down the seconds to the new year.
We’re running out of time!
Yet all I could do was stare into Kye’s eyes, holding on for what few precious seconds we had left.
“Holly, I need to say this.” His beautiful, red-flecked turquoise eyes grew serious and peered into mine as he crouched in front of me. “You’re exactly what I want. Not need. Want. I don’t need you Holly, I want you. Even if you can’t free me. Even if I only have one month a year for the next sixty—I want them to be with you. I don’t care if that makes me selfish.”
I was snot-crying all over again, dammit.
“I’ll be selfish with you every day I can. Do you understand me, Holly? You. Are. Enough.”
“Ten, nine, eight...”
“Kye, I—” I closed my eyes, my brain spinning and tumbling and trying to process everything he just said. “I love you.”
The band and crowd sang, the tune so loud it floated into the lobby, “Should auld acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind...”
The warmth of his hand on my cheek grew cold.
I opened my eyes and Kye was gone.
TWENTY-ONE
HOLLY
The words on the essay I graded blurred together and I had to scrub my eyes to refocus. The coffee wasn’t helping. If anything, it made me jittery.
I looked at my comm.
1:23AM, January 30.
The rest of the essays could wait until tomorrow. Well, later today. I needed rest. Just...
Just not in that bed.
I gathered new sheets and spread them across my lounger in the living room. I’d been sleeping here for weeks. Just couldn’t bring myself to sleep in the bed where Kye’s scent of mint and oranges lingered, gradually fading as each day passed without him here.
Laying there in the dark, no more Christmas decorations to light the place up, I reached for my comm again and checked the calendar. Only seven more days until my appointment.
“Dad,” I’d said