He had changed out of his business suit but was no less stunning in an open leather jacket and dark blue striped shirt that he had left untucked from the jeans, which hugged low on his hips. His sexual power was breathtaking, and she struggled to get her breath back and gain control of the situation.
Never before had she felt self-conscious about her running clothes. But at this moment she desperately wished to be wearing anything other than the black tights and fitted heather-blue base layer top that provided her protection from the cold, but no modesty, outlining every curve of her body. She crossed her arms across her chest and held out one palm.
“Keys?” she asked, trying to adopt the same tone she used in the operating room when calling for an instrument.
He didn’t yield and her sense of discomfort was replaced by anger. “Not until I’m sure you are okay.”
When had it started to matter whether she was okay or not? It hadn’t mattered to Matt nine years ago, and even though she felt far from okay, she resented his concern.
“I’m not your responsibility, Matt. You don’t get to worry about me,” she ground out. She tilted her head upwards, trying to make up the six-inch difference in their height, and held his gaze.
“Easier said than done,” he sighed, and started climbing the stairs towards the second floor. His long legs took the stairs two at a time and before she could react he was at the top.
Not in her home, she thought. Matt could not go into her apartment, her home. It was her refuge, her place where no memories of Matt existed.
She reacted quickly to this thought, running up the stairs and without thinking, wedged herself between him and the apartment door. He wasn’t ready for her movement and his body followed through on its planned course, causing him to fall against her.
She was pressed between Matt and the door, and she didn’t know which one felt harder against her. She started to shake and felt warmth spread through her, his warmth. She could feel every contour of his chest through his open jacket, his shirt slowly dampening from her wet body. He instinctively widened his stance and braced himself with a hand on the door behind her to keep himself from falling any further forward into her. She ended up nestled between his legs, pelvis to pelvis, his upper body bracing over her.
Instinctively, she pressed into him and felt the hard ridge that was increasing in prominence. Beyond the slow roar that was filling her head she heard a small gasp but couldn’t tell if it came from him or her. She wasn’t sure how long they stood pressed against each other, until she felt him pull away at the same time he brought his forehead down to rest against hers, his eyes closed.
“Why?” he demanded quietly.
“Why what?” she whispered, confused and trying to block out the sense of loss his body’s retreat had caused.
“Why don’t you want me in your apartment? Is it about him? Is Tate Reed in there, waiting for you?” His voice was accusing, each new question seeming more condemning than the next. But he kept asking, not pausing, as though not wanting to hear her actual response.
Tate. Every warm enticing feeling she was having left her and she felt cold again as guilt washed over her. She tried to move even further back but felt the wood of the door against her. Tate loved her, Matt had never loved her, and she felt empty inside, thinking about both men.
“I’m not discussing my relationship with Tate with you and you have no right to ask me,” she whispered, not being able to bring her voice above the intimacy his question had possessed but still containing the outrage she felt. “You need to leave.”
He didn’t reply. He simply lifted his forehead, replacing it with his lips. She felt both heat and memories surge through her before he backed away and pressed her key into her hand. She remained against the door as she watched him leave, not trusting herself to move until he was gone.
She wasn’t sure how long she stood against the door even after he left. She felt like part of the wood, except for the small spot where her forehead burned with the memory of his soft lips pressed against her. It took hearing the beat of her shivering against the door to force her into action. She walked through the apartment in the dark, removing her clothes and leaving them in a wet trail behind her.
She stepped into the shower consumed by the cold inside and out. She had loved Matt then she had hated him, and now she had no idea how to feel. Part of her wanted to act out for the first time in her life and force him to tell her why. Why had he done it? But her instinct for self preservation was stronger. No matter what she had told herself about why Matt had left, it would hurt more to hear him say it aloud. Seeing him today had not only brought out her anger but also unleashed every painful question and feeling of self-doubt she had tried to bury away and forget.
It took the water transitioning to cold before she thought of leaving the shower. She changed into scrub bottoms and a cotton tank top and ate the only thing she had the energy to prepare for supper—toast. It wasn’t long before she was lying on the soft yellow couch cocooned within the gray blanket, trying to focus on her medical textbook and not the memories that kept replaying in her mind.
As a child she had been outgoing and bright, ready to tackle and succeed at every challenge presented to her. She had been fearless with the knowledge that her parents had always been behind her, supporting her and loving her. Then things had changed when she was eleven. Her mother had been diagnosed with breast cancer and for two years everything had focused on her mother and the disease. Kate had watched helplessly as nothing had worked, nothing had made things better, for her mother or her family.
She’d died when Kate was thirteen and from then on her family had no longer existed. She remembered one of their last moments together at the hospice. Her father had been sobbing and with what little energy she’d had her mother had stroked her hair and told her not to cry. And she hadn’t.
Without her, Kate had felt lost, but not as lost as her father had. Kate’s parents had been the loves of each other’s lives, and without her mother Kate’s dad had withdrawn from life and from his daughter. She had lost both parents, one to cancer and the other to depression, which as a thirteen-year-old she’d had no capacity to understand.
Kate’s memories of middle and high school were not normal ones, something she had realized but didn’t have time to care about. She spent those years trying to be the perfect daughter, student, homemaker, and friend to her dad, anything to make him happy, to make him come back to her. She hid every feeling of unhappiness and loneliness away, afraid that her pain would make her father worse and ruin what little they had together. She never discussed her mother and carried her grief alone. Every new womanly feeling or change she experienced she ignored, because it hurt too much to miss the mother she wanted to share those moments with.
Kate was terrified to graduate from high school, knowing that it meant she would have to leave home and her dad. It wasn’t until she arrived at Brown University and had some time on her own that she realized how different she was from the other students, especially the other girls. They all seemed so beautiful and confident and, next to them, she felt completely inadequate and unprepared for life as a woman. She went home every weekend, not just to see her dad but also to escape the weekend social gatherings where she felt so out of place.
This eventually became a comfortable routine that lasted three years, until one weekend she came home and her dad introduced her to Julia. Her father had found love again and for the first time since her mother’s death he was happy. Kate shared his happiness and at the same time felt her feelings of loneliness hit rock bottom.
Watching
