“I’m not here to fuck with her head.”
He licks his lips and leans back in the chair, crossing his ankle over his knee.
“Look, Rhys, I understand that you’re protecting her, which I respect. I have three sisters, and if anyone even looks at them sideways, I want to rip into them. I don’t want to hurt Kate. I’m nothing like her ex-husband.”
“There are few people out there like her ex-husband. He’s a murdering sonofabitch motherfucker,” Rhys says matter-of-factly.
I nod, in complete agreement, when one word brings me up short.
“Murdering?” I ask, much more calmly than I feel.
“I know a lot of people don’t consider the loss of unborn life to be murder, but in this case, it was brutal murder, man.”
I frown, lost, and then the conversation from the graveyard comes to mind.
“Did he ever put you in the hospital?”
“Once.”
“Are you saying he—”
“She didn’t tell you,” he mutters and curses, pushing his hand through his hair. “Yes, he did.”
“I know that he hurt her.”
Rhys lets out a humorless laugh.
“Yes, he hurt her. He used her for a punching bag. For sport.” He clears his throat and has to stand to pace the living room. “Look, this is her story to tell, but I’m going to tell it anyway, because you need to know what she had to overcome just to let you close enough to touch her, man.
“That fucker smacked her around regularly. Not usually in the face to leave bruises, or when I was in town, because he’s a spineless asshole. But then she got pregnant.”
I swallow hard, hating the words about to come out of his mouth, and feeling so fucking helpless it’s almost crippling. I also stand and pace, unable to sit.
“She thought the baby would make him change.” Rhys shakes his head. “Men like that don’t change.”
“No. They don’t.”
“So, she pissed him off one day. I don’t know how. Sometimes all it had to do was rain for him to hit her. He knew she wanted that baby.” Rhys stares at me, blinking hard. “All I know for sure is that he kicked her in the stomach, repeatedly, then threw her down the stairs. He made her miscarry, at fifteen weeks. It wasn’t an easy miscarriage. She was in the hospital for a week.”
Once.
“Please tell me that fucker is in jail,” I say through the hot, burning rage boiling in my gut. “Because, if he isn’t, I’m going to fucking kill him.”
“He is. For now.” Rhys’s smile is cold. “And when he gets out, you’ll have to get in line. So, I’m going to ask you, right now, what your intensions are with Kate, and you’d better be brutally honest with me.”
“I love her. I’m not leaving here without her.”
“Not good enough.”
I raise a brow. “Love isn’t good enough?”
“No.” He shoves his hands in his pockets. “It isn’t.”
I mirror his stance, hands in pockets, in a stand-off with the man protecting my girl.
I like him.
“She scares the fuck out of me.”
“Now we’re getting somewhere.” His lips quirk. “If she didn’t scare you a little, she wouldn’t be the one for you.”
“I will take my own life before I ever even think about hurting her in any way. I’m not saying I won’t be an idiot and say things that I’ll regret, but I would never intentionally hurt her, Rhys. I’d never touch her in anger. She’s…everything.”
He studies me for a long moment, and then finally nods. “Okay. I like you.”
“They didn’t have the milk and cookies ice cream flavor, so I got chocolate chip cookie dough,” Kate announces, as she comes in the house through the entrance to the garage, lugging plastic grocery bags. “And you can stop judging me right now, Rhys O’Shaughnessy, because I deserve ice cream.” She sets the bags down on the kitchen island, then looks up, and her eyes go wide when they land on me.
Fuck, she looks amazing.
“Someone came to see you,” Rhys says.
“And you can show him out,” she says to her cousin, and turns to march out of the room. “I don’t have anything to say to him.”
“Looks like this is going to be a challenge,” he says, and claps his hand on my shoulder. “And something tells me few things are a challenge for you these days.”
I smile and walk after her.
“I love a challenge.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Earlier that day…
Kate
“Seriously? Weren’t you in this exact spot, doing exactly this, when I went to bed last night?” Rhys is standing over me, hands on his lean hips, frowning down at me. I’m lounging on the couch, eating stale popcorn.
“What? I’m in the middle of a season of Vampire Diaries.”
“How many seasons have you watched in the past three days?”
“Four.” I scowl up at him. “I finished with Orange Is the New Black.”
“Kate, you haven’t eaten real food in days. And you smell…ugh.”
“Then don’t come in here.” I stick my tongue out at him and return to my show. “By the way, Damon is hot in this show. Why are the hot guys always the jerks?”
“I’m a jerk?”
“You’re not hot.” I smirk and then squeal when he takes my popcorn away and sits at the opposite end of the couch with it. “Give it back!”
“No.” He shoves a handful in his mouth, and then spits it back out again. “This is disgusting. When did you pop it?”
“I don’t know.” I shrug and reach for the Twizzlers. “Two days ago?”
“Now you’re just being gross.”
“I’m being lazy,” I correct him, and cringe inwardly. I am gross. I do smell. I haven’t washed my hair in a week. I don’t remember what my own bedroom looks like because I haven’t left the downstairs since I got home.
Not that I’m going to admit that to him.
“So, what’s up with that chick, Elena?” he asks, pointing to the screen. “She’s hot for a vampire.”
“She’s not a vampire. Well, her doppelganger is.” I catch him up on the show, giving him the highlights, and sigh when the credits roll. “This is seriously good TV.”
“Kate?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m worried about you.”
“Why? Because I love the Vampire Diaries?”
He raises a brow and stares at me like I’m stupid. And I’m not stupid.
“There’s no need to worry. I’m just taking some lazy time between jobs, that’s all.”
“You’re sad,” he says softly. “I can’t stand it when you’re sad. Have you talked to him at all?”
I shake my head no. “I don’t want to hear from him.”
“Maybe you should call him,” he suggests.
“Maybe not,” I reply.
“You’re being stubborn.”
He fucked another woman while I was right next door, pining for him! I’m so not telling Rhys that. Talk about humiliating.
But the most humiliating part? I know this. I know it, and I still miss him so much it hurts.
Because I’m a stupid girl.
And I’m sick of being stupid. And sad. And…smelly.
“You know what?” I say and stand, stretch, and ignore him when he winces at the smell of me. “You’re right. I’m done sitting on the couch. I’m going to go take a shower and go to the grocery store.”
“Good, you could use some sun. You’re as pale as those vampires on that show.”
“You know, you used to be nice to me. You used to love me.”
“You used to smell good,” he replies with a grin and crosses his arms as I saunter by. “Take a shower, and I’ll love you again.”
“Conditional love.” I tsk tsk as I walk by. “There aren’t supposed to be strings attached to love, Rhys. Maybe that’s why you can’t keep a girlfriend.”
“I don’t want to keep a girlfriend,” he replies with a laugh. “Girlfriends expect stuff from you.”
“Yes,” I agree sarcastically, “like kindness and cuddle time and sex.”