Blind Spot - Katana Collins Page 0,73
left my clothes piled.
He followed behind me, even though he said nothing. When I spun around, half dressed, he barred the doorway, arms outstretched, blocking my way.
“You can’t keep me here,” I yelled, my voice shrieking in a way I hadn’t meant it to.
He moved forward with both hands up. “Stop running, Shelby. Talk to me. Maybe I can help.”
I snorted at that, shoving my arms into my shirt. “I’m beyond help. You should know that by now.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
TATE
“Well, that’s just bullshit,” I grunted as Shelby pushed past me, grabbing her bag from my coffee table.
“You wouldn’t understand.” Her voice cracked as she rummaged around her bag then scoured the room. “Where’s my phone,” she said, more to herself than me.
“What? What wouldn’t I understand?” I dipped to meet her gaze, but she was doing everything in her power to ignore me. “Shelby.” I gripped her shoulders, squeezing harder than I meant to. Beneath my grasp, she yelped and fell to the couch, curling her knees to her chin.
“Fuck.” I rubbed a hand over my eyes and lowered myself, sitting beside her but at a distance. “I–I’m sorry. I—Jesus, I’m sorry. I don’t know what else to say. I need you to talk to me.”
“I don’t know that I can,” she snapped.
I lifted my hands, dropping them to my thighs in defeat. “All I’ve had are these little glimpses of understanding that I’ve gotten between the times that you don’t fucking talk to me. I like you. I really do, but if we’re going to keep seeing each other, I need you to let me in.”
“That’s not true,” she whispered, shaking her head, and a silent tear slid down her face.
I swallowed. “It is true. I don’t know how to help. Or hell, how to even talk to you about certain topics if you won’t open up even a little.”
Her face turned whiter than the wet towel clenched in her hands.
Shit. Please don’t cry more. “Would it help if I shared something first?” I asked.
She didn’t say yes, but she didn’t say no, either.
I took a deep breath. “My family sucks,” I said, and she rolled her eyes, shoving to her feet once more. “No, hear me out.” I held up a hand, but didn’t dare to touch her as she sank back down next to me, alert, her spine stiff, ready to leave at any moment. But at least I had her sitting again. Emotion twisted in me—I had never admitted this out loud. It was weird, foreign. And even though I spoke a couple of languages fluently, the words got lost somewhere between my brain and my tongue.
“My dad has never said I love you. My mom only ever hugged me—hell, touched me—when there were cameras around. And sometimes…” I dragged another deep breath in through my nose. Did I sound utterly ridiculous? Too oh, poor little rich boy? But it was true. And I knew that it had fucked me up. “Sometimes I think I was only born because it was the right political move at the time for them.”
“That’s terrible.” Shelby shook her head.
I used the movement to scoot closer and put my hand on her knee. To her credit, she barely flinched. “My life was a whirlwind of events and shit I didn’t give a crap about. And freshman year here, I met a girl who I thought loved me back. We had a year of dating exclusively. I took her to every event and party. I bought her dinners and gowns and hired limos…” My voice cracked, and I rolled my eyes to the ceiling. “And I was young and naive enough to think that she was in it for me.
“When our first year was over, I proposed, only my parents wouldn’t give me access to my trust fund for a ring. She was annoyed, but it wasn’t until I presented her with a pre-nup that she flipped out. She made a lot of good arguments about how insulting a pre-nup is, and so I used every bit of money saved from my allowance to buy her a small ring until my trust was released. Only when I went over to her place, I found her in bed with some random dude. I’d never even seen him before. She didn’t want to marry me. I was interchangeable, as long as she got a certain lifestyle. She wanted to be the governor’s daughter-in-law, and that was it.”
Shelby snorted, rolling her eyes at that. “As if