A Matter of Heart (36 page)

I think about how it felt to
have his hand in mine, and how he’d unconsciously rub his thumb up and down my
skin in an intimate way. I think about how his hair would tickle me when he’d
press down on me, and we’d kiss so much that I’d be delirious. I think about
how, when I was falling apart, he risked his own heart to make sure I was okay.

Caleb orders me to stop
thinking about these things, but I can’t, because this person, this man who has
inspired so much in me since the moment we met, is sitting across from me. An
ache pounds through my body, one that I shouldn’t let myself feel.

Jonah trusts you,
Caleb
throws out.
He trusts you two to be around each other. Don’t do this, Chloe.

I abruptly stand up. “Do you
want a drink? Water? Tea? Hot chocolate?”

But
I do not wait for his answer before fleeing.

I am pouring honey into my
tea when Kellan appears in the kitchen. “Why can’t I sense your feelings?”

I freeze momentarily while
stirring the honey. “I don’t know—”

“Yes you do,” he says
quietly. “Why can’t I feel you?”

I grip the cup in an effort
to hide my shaking hands. He takes a step closer to me and I must be suicidal,
or flat-out tired, because I murmur, “I learned how to block my emotions from .
. .” I’m about to say him, and Jonah, too, but I chicken out. “People.”

“From people.”

“Yeah,” I say softly,
staring at my tea.

“And by people, you mean—”

“People,” I finish for him.
And then I nod.

“Does Jonah know about
this?”

I shake my head. Sip my tea.

“Don’t . . . please don’t
think you have to do that around me.” He’s so close now that we’re practically
touching. “I hate not being able to gauge how you are.”

“It’s better this way,” I
whisper, but he shakes his head no.

“Please,” he murmurs. “Just
let me in.”

I focus on his hand resting
against the counter, and of all the lovely things that hand is capable of doing
to me. And then, despite Caleb telling me not to, I slowly drop the shield
around me.

I’m left vulnerable and open
and ashamed that he can now sense everything in me that shouldn’t be there.

We stand in the kitchen in
silence for a few minutes, me sipping my tea, him staring at the counter next
to us. “So,” I say, because I can’t stand it anymore, “Sophie, huh?”

He sighs heavily. “It’s not
like you think.”

“You looked happy.” I’m
chewing on glass. “When I first saw you two at the restaurant. Before you saw
me.”

It’s not an accusation.

He grapples for something to
say, but is unable to actually string a series of cohesive words together. “I’m
. . . it’s like this, I mean . . . she’s . . .” He pulls at his hair again. “I
never actually thought you’d ever meet Sophie.”

“Why not?”

“She’s . . .” He leans back
against the counter, and his hands move up and down, from the tile to his hair
to his legs, like they don’t know where they ought to be. “She’s nobody.”

I don’t think anyone who’d
ever seen, let alone met Sophie, could ever claim that. “She’s somebody that
obviously makes you happy.”

He stares over my shoulder,
at the fridge. “Do you know why I’m not at that party tonight?”

“Because of work?”

Kellan presses his palms
against his forehead, as if he’s trying to push out a headache. “Today wasn’t
supposed to happen.” It’s obvious he’s exhausted. “Sophie is . . .” His hands
drop and he looks at me, really looks at me. “I didn’t expect to have to talk
to you about this, but I guess, in light of what’s happened . . .” He takes the
cup out of my hand and sets it on the counter. “Seeing other girls—that’s
always been a distraction to help me deal with all of this shit. It’s
ridiculously superficial, and that’s the way I prefer it.”

“But,” I begin, and he
shakes his head, not finished. His fingers brush up against mine on the
counter, so soft, but enough to generate enough electricity to power the entire
building. “What you’re feeling, all of this mess of jealousy and anger and pain
and sadness . . .”

I close my eyes, shamed that
he knows it all.

“All of this,” he continues,
his fingers now overlapping mine, “is what I feel every single time I see you
with my brother.”

I slam, headfirst, into a
well-deserved wall of guilt.

“Sometimes,” he adds, “it’s
hard to even breathe.”

I stare up at him.

“Sophie is the latest
distraction. She’s nice, funny, sexy, intelligent—I mean, she’s pretty much
everything anyone would want when they’re looking for a girlfriend. And yeah,
I’ve been seeing her for awhile, because . . . because she’s been a pretty good
distraction.” He laughs bitterly. “That makes me sound like such an asshole,
doesn’t it?”

I didn’t think I could
dislike Sophie Greenfield more, but I do now. Even still, I say, as sincerely
as I can, “That’s good. I mean, if she’s all those things to you—”

“You told me tonight that
she’s in love with me.” He sighs. “And I can’t . . . I guess my selfishness can
only go so far.”

My throat is dry and sticky
at the same time. “What do you mean?”

“It isn’t fair to let Sophie
feel that way. I honestly believed until today that she was on the same page as
me.”

“Meaning?”

“I was very clear with her
from the beginning. I don’t want anything more from her than superficiality.”

I patently ignore what
superficiality
is a placeholder for. “If she’s all those things to you, and she says she’s
never been happier with someone than she feels with you, then why—”

“You know why it’s not fair,
C. I can never, ever remotely feel even the tiniest bit of that towards her.”

The terrible impulse to both
cry and celebrate rings throughout me. “She loves you,” I say, trying my best
to be selfless.

“I don’t care,” he says
quietly.

“You were happy with her. I
saw it.”

“No,” he says. “It was an
act, and you know it.”

I swallow hard. “I shouldn’t
have come over. If I were smart, I would’ve walked away instead of sitting
down, and you’d be at the party with her right now, having fun.”

“But you did sit down.”

“I’m sorry, it was . . .” I
clear my throat. “I wasn’t thinking.” Which is always my problem when it comes
to Kellan.

Even though just our fingers
are touching, and really, just a few, I can feel him everywhere in me when he
asks, “Why did you?”

I whisper, “Honestly?”

He nods, and Caleb yells at
me to stop talking immediately, but it feels right all of a sudden to share all
this with Kellan after he’s shared so much with me tonight. “Because . . . I
was jealous, and —I mean, I knew you dated. I thought I was okay with it. I
guess I was, pre-her. And then she told me she lo—how she felt, that you’ve
been dating for awhile. I’d always been told that you never stick with anyone,
so I just . . .”

His fingers slide between
mine and we drift even closer, which seems impossible. He lifts our joined
hands up and very, very gently kisses my fingers. A buzz takes over my
trembling body.

“I know,” I continue, my
voice cracking, “that I really have no place to say these things—”

“Yes you do,” he says softly.

“I . . . I. . .” Hate that
you were with her, I want to say, but Caleb’s warning me if I do, I’ll be
crossing a line I might not be able to come back from. So I switch to, “If . .
. if she makes you happy . . .”

He shakes his head.

But I keep going. “If you .
. .” I try not to gag. “Enjoy dating her, then—”

He leans down and murmurs in
my ear, “Is it wrong of me to feel so pleased with your jealousy?”

Yes. No. “I do want you
happy.”

“I know,” he says. “I want
you to be happy, too.”

“I think I need to go back
into my little bubble where I don’t know that you connect to other women—”

He chuckles quietly. “You’re
not listening to me. I haven’t
connected
with her. I’m only Connected to
you
.”

“You know what I mean.”

“She’s nobody to me. It
sounds horrible to say it like that, but it’s the truth. And . . . you don’t
have to worry. I won’t be seeing her again.”

“If you like her,” I say,
trying for the selfless thing once more, even though it goes against everything
in me, “you should—”

He squeezes my hand. “I’m probably
the biggest masochist in all the worlds to admit this, but this,”—his free hand
traces a line between us—“whatever it is we have, are to each other, is . . .”
He takes a deep breath, exhales a rueful laugh. “I will always take it over
anything else with anyone else.”

I don’t know if I’m even
breathing anymore.

He lets go of my hand; the
heels of his palms press against his eyes for a long moment. When his hands
lower, there’s a vulnerability in his eyes I haven’t seen in a long time, not
since the cave. “Gods, I’m such an asshole to even contemplate telling you
this. But here’s the truth—you are my everything, Chloe. Sophie is . . .
irrelevant. So are any of the other girls I know. There’s only you. You’re the
only one I’ll ever see. The only one I’ll ever want.”

I don’t let myself think
about Jonah, because it will only bring me to my knees. I don’t think about
Sophie and how her heart is about to be obliterated thanks to me. I don’t think
about how I’ll probably be hurting Kellan, too, in the long run.

Because what I’m thinking
about is how part of my heart is his and always will be, no matter what. No
matter how much we pretend differently.

I don’t know whose lips
touch whose first, but we’re suddenly kissing in the middle of my kitchen. It
doesn’t matter who started it, though, because the moment we do, everything
else fades away.

There is nothing, no one
else.

Eventually, we stumble into
the living room. I honestly can’t figure out how we find the couch, because we
never stop kissing, never let go of each other. I fall back against the couch
first, pulling him with me, and then I’m tugging his sweatshirt off and he
slides my robe off, and while we’re nowhere close to being naked with my tank
top and his t-shirt, it still feels so much better to have skin to touch.

We continue kissing, the
passion between us incinerating my insides to the point I can literally feel
nothing else but him. Not the couch below me, not the cashmere against my skin,
not his shirt, nothing, nothing at all but pleasure. And then, his t-shirt is
even too much, so I tug that off, too, and my mind just goes blank with how
wonderful he feels against me. At how many places there are to kiss and
discover. Of the feeling of his hand, under my shirt, on my bare breasts.

He whispers against my ear,
“Oh, gods, Chloe,” and we just cannot find ourselves close enough. Every part
of my body seems to be up against his, but it doesn’t feel like he’s close
enough, not even remotely so.

Our
hearts thrum against each other, in unison, both racing so fast, like we’re
running at top speed, like they’ll burst from exertion. Can a heart do that?
Literally,
physically burst from racing so fast? Because when he touches
me like he is, I think I’d risk anything for it.

When my cell phone rings the
first time, I ignore it, because nothing is more important than this. But when
it rings a second time, Kellan pulls up, breathing hard and looking confused.
Me? I’m trying to tug him back down to me.

The phone rings, twice,
three times. Before I can tell him to ignore it, he reaches over onto the
coffee table and picks it up so he can hand it over.

I have to hunt for my voice,
as he’s stolen it away.

“Chloe?” It’s Lizzie, and
for the life of me, I can’t remember why I’m so pissed at her. “Are you okay?
You sound . . . have you been running?”

I laugh to keep the hysteria
at bay. “Can I call you back later?”

“Well, I’ve been trying to
call you all evening,” she complains. “Are you avoiding me?”

I ought to just hang up on
her. “Of course not,” I gasp. “I . . . uh . . . need to go, okay?”

Kellan lowers his head and
nips at my neck. Pleasure ripples through me so strongly I nearly drop the
phone. I can barely hear her as his mouth trails down my neck. I’m so turned
on, I think I might be delirious.

“Chloe?” Lizzie calls, and
I’m forced to refocus. “Are you listening? I asked you if you’ve heard from
Kellan tonight.”

This
I
hear. “Kellan?”

He stops kissing me so he
can bring his ear closer to the phone.

“Yes,” she says, irritated.
“Kellan.”

“Why?” He pushes my hair out
of the way, taking his time as he pulls his fingers through my long strands.
There are parts of my body turning to mush that I never knew were there.