I fucking like her, and the more I’m around her, the more I don’t want to be apart from her.
“I’m putting in my two-week notice,” she says.
Shit. I chew on my lip until I’m positive I won’t drop to my knees and beg her to stay. “Why?”
She hesitates and then says, “You know why.”
She disappears back inside the building, and I sit in my fucking feelings.
I stare at my truck with an intense urge to drive straight to Patrick and Grace’s house and tell them all about Kenna. I want to tell them how selfless she is. I want to tell them what a hard worker she is. I want to tell them how forgiving she is, because every single one of us has been making her life a living hell, yet she somehow doesn’t seem to resent us for it.
I want to tell Patrick and Grace every wonderful thing about Kenna, but even more than that, I want to tell Kenna how wrong I was when I told her Diem wouldn’t benefit from having her in her life.
Who am I to say that to a mother about her own child?
Who the fuck am I to make that kind of judgment?
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
KENNA
It starts raining on our drive home. The rain hitting the windshield is the only sound right now, because neither of us is speaking. We haven’t said a word to each other since we were in the alley earlier tonight.
I wonder if he’s mad that I put in my notice. I don’t know why he would be; he’s the one who brought it up. But he’s so quiet it’s making things uncomfortable.
I can’t continue to work for him, though. How do we plan for my potential departure when we’re starting to crave each other’s company? I thought this was messy before, but it’s bound to get even messier if I let it continue.
There’s an unresolved energy moving between us in the truck when he pulls into the parking lot. Sometimes when he drops me off, he doesn’t even turn off the engine of his truck. But tonight he does, and he removes the keys, and his seat belt, and he grabs an umbrella and gets out of the truck.
It only takes him a few seconds to make it to the passenger side, but in that few seconds, I’ve decided I don’t want him to walk me up. I can walk myself up. It’s better that way. I don’t trust myself with him.
He opens my door and I reach for the umbrella, but he pulls it back.
“What are you doing?” he asks.
“Give me the umbrella. I can walk myself up.”
He takes a step back so I can get out of his truck. “No. I’m walking you up.”
“I don’t know if you should.”
“I definitely shouldn’t,” he says. But he keeps walking. Keeps holding the umbrella over my head.
My breaths start to catch in my chest before we even reach the top of the stairs. I fish my keys out of my purse, unsure if he’s expecting to come inside or if he just plans to tell me good night. Either choice makes me nervous. Either one is too much. Either one will do.
He closes the umbrella when we reach my door and waits for me to unlock it. Before I open it, I turn to face him as if he’s going to let me say good night without inviting him inside.
He points at my door but says nothing.
I quietly inhale and then push open the door to my apartment. He follows me inside and closes the door behind him.
He’s acting so assured right now. The complete opposite of what I’m feeling. I scoop Ivy up and take her to the bathroom so she can’t get out in case Ledger opens the door to leave.
When I close the bathroom door and turn around, Ledger is standing at the counter, running a finger across the stack of letters I printed out.
I don’t want him to read them, so I walk over and flip them over and shove them aside.
“Are those the letters?” he asks.
“Most of them. But I have digital copies too. I typed them all up a couple of months ago and put them into Google Drive. I was afraid to lose them.”
“Will you read one of them to me?”
I shake my head. Those letters are personal to me. This is the second time he’s asked if I’d read one, and the answer is still no. “You asking me to read you one of those letters would be like me asking you to play a tape of one of your therapy sessions.”
“I don’t go to therapy,” Ledger says.
“Maybe you should.”
He chews his lip with a contemplative nod. “Maybe I will.”
I walk around him and open the refrigerator. I’ve slowly been stocking it, so I actually have more than Lunchables this time. “You want something to drink? I have water, tea, milk.” I grab an almost-empty container of juice. “A swig of apple juice.”