I hated the circumstances that had brought us to this, but I wasn’t going to waste a fucking second of the time I would get to be alone with Kin. The waiting room was half full and Kin found two seats in the back. I dropped down beside her and she didn’t shy away when I draped an arm over the back of her chair.
“Do you think her hand is really broken?” Her voice was slightly shaky and she looked up at me with worried blue eyes.
“I doubt it. It’s most likely a bad bruise or a sprain, but those can hurt worse than a break. Kassa sprained her foot when she was thirteen. The doctor said she would’ve had a shorter recovery time if she’d actually broken it.”
She let out a relieved sigh. “Caleb broke his foot his freshman year of high school. He had to have a plate and wore a boot for three months. Football was a no go, so that’s when he started going crazy with the weightlifting.”
“I remember you telling me about that,” I murmured, remembering her stepbrother who could easily bench-press one of the cars he was so intent on learning to engineer in college. “He tripped over Angie’s curling iron in the bathroom.”
Kin’s eyes widened and the smallest of smiles teased at her lips. “Yeah.” The smile was quick to disappear and she looked away from me. “Yeah…”
Her voice was full of so much sadness that it gutted me. I knew how close she was to the twins. She probably missed them just as much as I missed Kassa. “Don’t you get to see them at all, Kin?”
She was quiet for a long moment and I was sure she wasn’t going to answer me when she finally shrugged and shook her head. “Scott won’t let me go visit them for Christmas, but Carter said he might be able to come out here to California for a few days. That helps a little.”
My hands clenched into fists and I glared off at nothing in particular as I realized just how lonely Kin must be. I knew she had Lucy, but she was probably the only person Kin had right then. She needed more people to support her, to help her grieve for her mother. To just be there for her.
I should have been one of those people.
“I’m so sorry about your, mom,” I told her, and her head snapped around. It was the first time I’d actually given her my condolences for losing her mother. Fuck, I sucked. “Abby was a great woman, and I know how close you two were. I’m sorry you lost her. I’m…sorry for everything.”
Kin stared up at me for nearly two full minutes, but I didn’t dare look away or break our gazes in any way. She wasn’t glaring at me, and the look in her eyes told me she wasn’t plotting my death. But I could see the hurt still shining bright, could see the pain that was right below the surface.
Finally, she blew out a long harsh breath. “Thanks, Jace. I really appreciate it. My mom… She liked you. When you left for California, she was proud of you and the other guys.”
A white-hot blade stabbed into my chest. Abagail Jacobson had been proud of me? Fucking hell, why did that hurt so much?
Because you haven’t done shit to make her proud, dumbass. All you’ve done is break her girl’s heart and fuck around.
We sat there in silence for nearly ten minutes. I tried to find the right words to tell her again how sorry I was, not just for her mom, but for leaving. For not calling. Not finding out if she was okay or to see how she was handling what was going on with her mother. I wanted to say the right thing that would make her forgive me for so many fuckups, but nothing would come. Me, Jace St. Charles, had no words for the first time in my life.
Before I could find the right thing to say, she surprised me by turning in her hard, plastic seat and looking me in the eyes. She blew out a harsh huff, but then gave me a grim smile that made me want to put my fist through a wall for some fucking reason. “Look, Jace, I’m sorry. I’ve been a huge bitch to you for months now.”
I had to clench my teeth to keep from opening my mouth and saying something stupid. Yeah, she had been a bitch, but I’d deserved it. So I sat there, staring at her with wide eyes as she continued. “I understand why you left, and I’m actually really proud of you and Tainted Knights for accomplishing so much.” She smiled, but it was full of sadness. “I knew the second I heard you guys performing in Bristol that you would go places. It’s just…I guess everything happened all at once. You left. My mom got so sick and then…died...”
Her voice broke but she cleared her throat and continued as if she hadn’t just nearly cried. Nearly broken down and sobbed. But that was Kin. She was strong when she needed to be. That she’d had to be so strong and on her own for too damn long only pissed me off that much more. At myself. At her father. At the fucking world.
“I had no right to be so mad. I’m sorry I was a bitch,” she said with a little more strength in her voice.
“Kin…” I didn’t want her apology. She had nothing to be sorry about. I should have tried harder, should have fucking been there for her when she needed someone to hold her through losing her mother. Through having to uproot herself during her senior year of high school and move in with a new family she didn’t know, like or trust.
She shook her head. “No, don’t say anything. I just… Can we be friends? I mean, we’re going to see a lot of each other, what with your best friend being so obviously in love with my best friend. We could at least be civil to each other and try to be friends.”
She wanted to be friends.
Friends.
Civil.
Fuck friends.
Fuck civil.
But hell, it was more than what I had right then. Maybe she would even answer the damn phone when I called her now. So biting back my need to yell at the world that I wanted more than friendship—that I wanted her back in my arms where she belonged—I nodded. “I’d like that, Kin.”
Chapter 12
Kin