“I’m not going,” I state, watching her tense shoulders relax at my answer.
“Good,” she whispers, and I feel that one word wash through me. “Do you want coffee?”
“Yeah.” I close the distance between us, and she pulls down a coffee mug from the cupboard, handing it to me.
“Coffee pods are in the drawer under the machine.” She nods toward the Keurig on the counter. “Cream is in the fridge, and sugar is there.” She points to a canister. “How do you like your eggs?”
“Anyway you want to cook them is good with me.”
“Okay.” She gives me a smile then cracks two more eggs into the pan before taking toast out of the toaster and buttering it. Leaning back against the counter next to her with a cup of fresh coffee in my hand, I look at the shelf we put together and see that she already stacked her books on it.
“You’ve been up a while,” I observe, and she looks from me to her shelf that is now full of books.
“I can never sleep in. No matter how late I go to bed, I always wake up early.” She pulls down two plates before looking at me once more. “Did you sleep okay? I was going to go in and shut the skylight, but I didn’t want to wake you by closing it.”
“I slept better than I’ve slept in a long time,” I confess, and her eyes soften. “I like the skylight. I might have to put one in the master at the lake house.”
“It’s pretty awesome. I like lying under it when it rains even more than at night when the skies are clear.”
“I’ll have to experience that myself sometime,” I say, taking her hand and pulling her a step closer to me after she finishes buttering the toast and putting two fresh slices in the toaster. “What’s your plans for today?”
“I have a client coming into the salon at ten, so I have to work. What about you?”
“Work tonight, but after that I’m free. You feel like hanging out later?”
“Sure.” She leans into me with her weight, and I dip my face, brushing my lips over hers, touching my tongue to her bottom lip. Her mouth opens and I deepen the kiss. “We should eat,” she breathes into my mouth as my hands roams down her body and I drag her tighter against me.
“Yeah.” Kissing her one last time, I regretfully let her go.
“Here.” She hands me a plate loaded with bacon, eggs, and toast. Picking up my cup of coffee, I follow her outside to a colorful round table with two chairs that’s on the deck. “I know it’s not a lake view, but it’s not a bad one.” She takes a seat, setting her plate and cup on the table. Folding into the chair across from her, I laugh when she does. The chair might be okay for a chick that’s probably five-eight, but at six-four, my knees come up to my chest when I sit. “Oh, God.” She covers her face, peeking at me through her fingers. “We can go inside to eat.”
“It’s all good.” I place my hand over hers when she goes to stand. Stretching out my legs, I cross my ankles. “I’ve always been tall. Even when I was little, I was bigger than everyone else, so I had to make it work.”
“How tall were you in high school?”
“When I graduated, I was six-two,” I say, and her eyes widen.
“How tall are you now?”
“Six-four.”
“I knew you were tall, but sheesh, you’re really tall!” she says, and I laugh then watch her pick up her toast and take a bite.
“So you do hair?” I ask, thinking it’s ridiculous as fuck that I didn’t find that out from her yesterday, seeing how we spent the entire day together.
“Yeah, I went to college and did the whole four-year thing to please my parents, but I was never happy. So when I graduated with a degree in business management, I decided to spend two more years doing something I knew I would be happy with. I’ve always loved makeup and hair, so it seemed like a no-brainer.”
“Where are your parents now?”
“Florida, about two hours outside of Miami.”
“Why Tennessee?” I ask, and something shifts behind her gaze, but she hides it quickly.
“I just wanted a change.” She shrugs then nods to my plate. “You should eat before your food gets too cold.”
Picking up my fork, I dig in then spend another hour with her before I leave her with a kiss and a promise to see her later.
Kim
HEARING KNOCKING ON the sliding glass door, I roll out of bed and glance at the clock. It’s after 1:00 a.m. Sage sent a text while I was at work and told me he would be over late, since what he was doing was going to keep him a while, but one in the morning is not someone who is interested in you. One in the morning is the time a booty call shows up, and I do not want to be a booty call, no matter how amazing the sex was between us.
Feeling something uncomfortable fill the pit of my stomach, I grab my robe and pull it on quickly while the knocking turns to pounding. Hitting the living room, I turn on the light, and that’s when I see Kelly standing outside, looking at me through the glass with her fist up ready to start knocking again.
“Hey,” I greet her as soon as I slide the door open.
“I’m leaving,” she states, tossing her hair that looks exactly like mine over her shoulder.
“You’re leaving,” I repeat, and she nods, shouldering past me into my apartment that she hasn’t been staying at and she’s only used when the guy she’s been messing around with kicks her out of his bed, leaving her no choice but to come here to crash. “Why… I thought—”
“I can’t do it. I thought I could, but I can’t,” she cuts me off, going to the closet, grabbing her black duffle bag from the floor, and opening it up.
“I need you,” I whisper, watching her pull things off hangers and shove them into the open bag on the floor.
“You need me.” She turns around to face me, picking up the bag, and I notice then that her eyes are wild, which means she’s gotten high recently—something she told me she would stop doing. “You don’t fucking need me. You just want to use me like every fucking other person in my life does.”
Rearing back like she slapped me, my body jolts. “That’s not true.”
“It’s not?” She laughs, but her cackle sounds evil and grates across my skin. “You didn’t even fucking try to find me until you were out of options.”
“You know that’s not true.”
“I’m sure, bitch!” she shouts, and I take a step back.
I’ve never seen Kelly like this. I’ve never seen her so out of control, and I don’t have any idea how to fix this or how to defuse the situation. “You know my parents never told me about you or about our mom.” And they didn’t. I didn’t even know I was adopted until the day the test came back and I found out my kidneys were in the beginning stages of shutting down. That’s when they told me I had an identical twin. That’s when they told me everything.
“I don’t fucking care!” she screams at the top of her lungs, leaning toward me. “I do not fucking care about you.” She points in my face, and my heart cracks open. “I don’t care about any of this shit. I do not need your kind of fucking drama in my life.”