Raine, Livvy, the accident. My old man always ignoring me. And after the accident, finally noticing me.
And deciding he’d had enough of me.
I keep letting people down, people who matter to me. Good for nothing, that’s me. Unreliable. Worthless. Raine wants me to leave him in peace, and Kayla… I snapped at her, made her feel like crap when she came to help me, sweet and kind and pretty and everything I want. My rainbow princess. I let her down, too…
Her face fills my vision, and I think I hear her laughter, and music, and I’m floating on a cloud, light and free and happy.
Then I jerk awake once more, cursing, my phone vibrating in my pocket. Unknown number, the words flash on the screen, and I stare at them a moment too long before I click connect.
“Yeah?” I rasp. My throat is dry. “Who is this?”
“It’s Kayla.” Her bright voice fills my head and the room and the world. “I was wondering if you wanted more soup. And help. I could come right over, if you need me.”
“I…” My lungs fail me. My brain freezes. She’s offering to help me, to be here for me, despite the godawful way I treated her in my desperate anger.
Silence stretches like a tightrope between us.
“Just say yes,” she whispers. “If you want me to come over.”
I swallow hard. “Yes.”
The tension breaks. I can almost hear the crack.
“Okay then.” She laughs softly. “Be there soon.”
***
She knocks on the door, so softly at first I’m not sure I heard it. It’s eight in the morning, and she’s right here, stepping inside my apartment, her red hair caught in pigtails, her dress green, her boots black. Her mouth curls into a quick smile.
She’s like a ray of sunshine.
“Good morning.” She lifts a brown bag. “Breakfast?”
I step aside to let her in, still kinda stunned that she came. With breakfast. That she called and asked and offered…
Nah, maybe I’m still dreaming.
But she wanders into the living room, bends over Jason’s curled-up form and a flash of sadness passes over her expressive face. She pulls up the blanket a little higher, pats Jason’s hair.
The sting in my chest at the affectionate gesture is unexpected. I rub my hand over my thumping heart, not sure what it means.
Then she heads toward the kitchenette, her heels clicking faintly on the linoleum, and I follow her.
She’s taking tall Styrofoam cups out of the bag, and the smell of coffee and cinnamon is like a wake-up call zinging through my system.
Then she takes out donuts, and my mouth waters. It’s the combination, I think hazily, of the sugary smell and her pretty curves in my kitchen. She’s shrugged off her coat, and I can see how the green dress hugs her body, tracing her pert ass and her round tits so perfectly I can almost feel them under my hands.
The image of her dark nipples under my fingertips isn’t one I’m gonna be forgetting any time soon. Or her mouth against mine.
“I got you a sugar-sprinkled one,” she says, and the words hang in the air without meaning, like strange birds or falling stars.
“What?”
“Your donut. Seth said you prefer plain sugar-sprinkled donuts. Right?”
“Thanks.” Seth remembered that? She asked him about my donut preferences?
It’s too hot in here. Must be why my eyes are burning. It’s just that, fuck, I can’t remember the last time someone was so nice to me.