My mouth gaped wide as Kyle held the door open for the man, who pushed a cleaning cart out and toward the elevators. It rolled with a squeaky wheel.
“Happy New Year’s, folks,” he added, disappearing around the corner.
“You, too,” Kyle said, his voice soft, and his deep gaze set on me. The way he looked at me was unsettling. I felt hot and twitchy. He used to look at me that way, and I had loved it.
Once upon a time, I’d loved everything about him.
You hate him now. He crushed you. Don’t let him continue to do it.
I marched into the pool area where it was steamy, and instantly began to sweat. I surveyed the room and felt my eyes go large. “Oh my God.”
Because the place was stunning. The ceilings were tall and reflective, making the room feel much larger than it really was. The infinity pool wasn’t very big, but it didn’t matter. No one came here to swim laps. Surely people came to soak and enjoy the view. The far side of the room was mostly glass, separated with columns that were illuminated by uplighting. The pool’s edge was almost to the windows, giving the impression it was right against the glass.
The Opulent Hotel was a modest height, barely considered a skyscraper, but it boasted a fabulous view of the other buildings nearby, the skyline beyond, and the edge of Lake Michigan.
“My sister Payton got married here,” Kyle said. “I remembered the pool was something else.”
It was lit with two underwater lights, and the water cast shadowy ripples all around. “It’s amazing.”
I flinched when the cork popped on the bottle of champagne in Kyle’s hand. I’d been too distracted with the view to notice he’d set about opening it.
His tone was sheepish. “Sorry.”
I turned to glare at him while he poured the glasses of sparkling wine and set them on a table positioned between two lounge chairs. “So,” I snapped, “you do know how to apologize.”
Kyle shrugged out of his suit coat, probably sweating worse than I was in the hot room, and laid it gently over the chair back. “Do I have something to apologize for?”
“Are you shitting me?”
His gaze narrowed, and I wanted to scream. Did he honestly think what he’d done was no big deal? I couldn’t handle it if that was the case. Being this close to the pool was a bad idea. A vision of holding his head under the water until he stopped moving flitted through my evil mind.
“You want to finish your wine first,” he asked, “before we get into it?” He leaned over and braced his hands on the back of the lounge chair, waiting.
I stared at him for a long moment and decided his suggestion was a solid idea. I slammed the wine, hoping the time it took to drink it would bring me to a calmer state, or slow my reaction time down and give him a better chance to escape. Because I was still considering the most efficient way to get him underwater.
Then I was thinking about how he’d look wet. Goddamn it.
“You remember the last conversation we had?”
His tone was casual, but something was off. There was tension buried inside his voice, and I moved slowly to set my empty wine glass down.
“You said you thought you’d be finished loading your car in another hour.” That was the last thing he’d said before a hurried goodbye on the phone. I’d had no idea it was all the goodbye I was going to get.
He paused. “That’s it?”
“If you want to get technical, you sent me a text message the next day demanding I delete your number. I didn’t respond.”
His expression was strange as he picked up both the champagne glasses and held one out to me. When I took it, I was careful not to brush my fingers over his, even though I had the weird desire to do so.
“Okay, it didn’t take me an hour to load up.” His tone was dry. “As you established earlier, I can finish faster.”
I ignored the humorless joke. “Yeah, I figured it out when I went to your place and you were already gone.”
The glass was chilled in my hand, but it did nothing to subdue the fire that flared wildly until it was all I could feel. Maybe I didn’t need closure from him in the form of an apology. Perhaps all I needed was to tell him about the colossal pain he’d inflicted.
“God, Kyle. Do you have any idea what that was like? How much it hurt? I sat outside on the front step of your place, bawling my stupid eyes out.” I didn’t want to relive the memory, but it was unavoidable with him standing there, staring at me. I’d been too upset that day to drive, and my car had been far down the street, anyway. The shock and grief was physically debilitating, making it impossible to get to.
“On top of everything, it was so embarrassing! All your neighbors saw me, and I couldn’t stop crying like a fool. Fuck, it hurt just to breathe.” It’d felt like part of me was dying. Maybe it was. Kyle had damaged a section of my heart that still hadn’t recovered.