Though, I had to admit that my pad turned out to be better than I could have imagined. A cohesive flow of rustic and modern, antique and industrial.
Rex and his crew were skilled, that was for sure.
Too bad the only thing missing from the view tonight was a redhead propped on a table. Like one of those hypnotizing sirens playing you for help when you were the one who was gonna end up dead.
I roughed a hand over my face, trying to clear the vision, to purge her from my mind.
“So,” he prodded.
“So, what?”
“So, why are you moping around like some kind of pathetic pussy when you had that gorgeous girl hanging on your arm last night? Even you have to admit, she’s way out of your league.”
I drove my fingers through my hair. “Guess maybe she is.”
“She send you packing?”
“Something like that.”
I knew I’d pushed her too far and too fast last night. Touching her, thinking it was the only chance I was going to get. But it’d felt impossible not to after what she’d confessed. It hadn’t even been all that much, but I could see the betrayal and hurt written all over her.
The fear.
Without a doubt, the piece of shit was the reason she didn’t think she had anything to offer.
All I’d wanted was to make her feel more.
Treat her like the queen she deserved to be.
Ollie sobered, rocking back when he finally caught the magnitude of my mood. “Whoa . . . you actually really like this girl.”
I sighed out some of the frustration that’d been nagging me all day. “I don’t fucking know. There’s just . . . something about her I can’t shake. She owns this little coffee shop and bakery right down the street from the new office. Stumbled in there last Monday morning, and I couldn’t stay away. And you know I sure as hell don’t have the time or space for a girl, but I was asking her out before I could stop myself.”
“So, last night was, like, a for real date?” He said it like the idea was a mystery dangling somewhere in the universe.
I rubbed my forehead before raking my hand to the back of my head. “Yeah.”
“Are you going to see her again?”
“Nah, man.”
One night.
It was the only thing either of us could afford.
“And why not? Because your mopey ass does not seem to be happy about it. Which doesn’t fit you, by the way.”
“You know why.” I angled my face away from him a fraction when I said it.
Normally, I was the guy who looked to the bright side. The one who found the good buried in the rubble. But there would always be this one part of me where the sun had gone missing.
That place that had gone dark and dim.
That place I didn’t have the capacity to revisit.
I could feel the weight of his frown. “That was ten years ago, Kale, and you know it doesn’t have a thing to do with that girl. You’ve got to quit blaming yourself for something that wasn’t your fault. Quit thinking you can’t move on.”
My laughter was hard. “Not my fault?”
It didn’t matter that everyone around me had told me it wasn’t my fault. That I’d done everything I could. My heart had convicted me on the spot that I was the only one who should shoulder the blame.
“You made a mistake, man.”
A mistake?
“And someone died,” I spat.
The girl I loved fucking died because of that mistake.
Because I’d missed it.
Because I’d been too wrapped up.
Busy.
My guts clenched in pain. In the kind of regret that would never fade.
It was right at the second Ollie flinched with my statement. A lightning bolt that ravaged his body.
“Shit,” I muttered in apology, knowing where his mind had gone with the callus way I’d thrown it out there. Our situations were different, but in the end, we both were culpable for the same damned thing.
He’d sent his sixteen-year-old sister home from the lake in the middle of the night. Telling her she didn’t belong.
She hadn’t made it home that night.
That was the kind of guilt that could eat a man alive. Make him hard and callus and coarse.
Ollie lifted his head to the night sky. “We are a fucking pair, aren’t we?”
A low chuckle filtered free. “Yeah. Guess we are.”
He dropped his head back down to look at me, eyeing me seriously. “Don’t let the past keep you from today, man. I know you loved her, and I know a piece of you died with her. But what about the rest of you that’s still living? You’re the coolest fucking guy I know. You love with all you have. You give every part of yourself to your career and still manage to give more to the rest of us after there shouldn’t be anything left. You deserve to live, Kale. Really live.”