“Shit.” He ran his hand back and forth over his head like he always did when he was agitated. “I thought you knew. Matt didn’t tell you?”
I placed my hands on my hips and raised my brows, waiting for him to explain something that was no doubt still inexcusable.
“I picked her up at Avalanche that night. She started talking and…”
God, I so didn’t want to hear this, yet I had been the one stupid enough to ask.
“I told her about you and…”
Unfrigginbelievable.
“Jesus, Kat, I was drinking, had a few too many, and Lana—”
“Offered to suck your dick?”
His eyes narrowed and body stiffened. “You need to drop the fuckin’ attitude. I never touched her and I sure as hell would never let her mouth near my dick.”
“You know I can’t figure it out. You’re here trying to get me to listen to you after you did something so incredibly insensitive as bringing some chick to my homecoming. On the day I get back from the hospital after being shot.” I pushed on his chest and tried to get him to back away but failed. “No, forget it, I don’t care what excuse you come up with. Slime is slime, and it doesn’t change its consistency.”
Ream grabbed my wrists and locked them in place, so the palms of my hands were flat against his chest. “I hadn’t planned on coming that night. I didn’t want you to see how wrecked I’d been. Kat, you nearly died. Fuck. Fuck.” His grip tightened and I winced. He noticed and loosened a fraction. “I was drunk and Lana offered to drive me. And you know why she did? Because she wanted to fuck your brother. I thought he would’ve told you.”
“My brother doesn’t tell me who he fucks, Ream.”
He sighed. “This has to stop, Kat. The fighting.”
“Fine. We’ll ignore one another.” And yet I knew that was impossible. I couldn’t ignore him even when he wasn’t in the same country. I was constantly bombarded with thoughts of him at the farm with me, of us making meals together, painting, when he wiped the grease off my neck with the tip of his finger after fixing the tractor. How he made certain he was the one getting the door when a delivery arrived. A rule he’d insisted on. He said it was important the delivery men knew a guy was living here. I remembered the first time I heard him chuckle. He’d walked in on me attempting to put a curtain rod up by myself and instead ended up on my ass with the white sheer material overtop of me.
I felt Ream’s hand cup my chin and I met his brooding eyes. “That won’t ever happen, Kat. And you need to get that, so I’m going to tell you something. Something no one knows, not even Crisis. I wanted to tell you that night at the bar, but that shit you pulled with the guy …” I bit the corner of my lip. He saw it and I immediately let it go. “I swear if Matt hadn’t called security and got me out of there …” What? Shit, Matt would seriously have a hate on for him. “I’d have killed the guy.” He took a deep breath as if trying to ease the anger over the memory. “What I feel isn’t normal, Kat. It’s fucked up because I’m fucked up. I certainly don’t deserve you. But I’ve tried to forget you, and it’s not happening. So we will do this another way. You need to hear why I’m like I am and why I left like I did.”
I didn’t like the sound of that because secrets were almost always bad. Mine were.
“What I’m telling you … goes nowhere. Understand?”
I nodded. Not sure why, maybe because I hadn’t been the same either and I was searching for something to grab hold of. Was a truce possible for us?
“I had a sister.”
Oh God. He said had. I could feel his heart racing beneath my palms and the tension in his hands.
“My twin. We were complete opposites physically, and yet we were one and the same. She’d often finish my sentences and knew how I felt without me saying a word. She was my angel, the light to my darkness. We balanced one another out.”
He grunted then abruptly let me go and turned slamming his fist into the wooden barn door. I waited, not knowing what to say, if anything.
“She was only sixteen when she died.” His ragged whisper was that of a broken, torn man fighting to keep control. He leaned his forehead against the barn, his arms outstretched, palms flat on the rough surface looking like a crucifix.
I didn’t know what to say.
“It was my fault. It was my job to protect her and I didn’t.”
He was silent for a while, and I wasn’t sure if he was waiting for me to say something. I realized that no matter what had gone down between us, he deserved to be listened to.
He stayed quiet. Unmoving.
“Ream.” I moved toward him until I could feel the heat of his back seeping into my chest. Then I lay my hand on his shoulder and squeezed. “Ream.”
His shoulders sagged. “I was in and out of the hospital constantly with her. Never knowing if she was coming out alive. It was the drugs that finally did her in.” Shit. That was why he freaked when he’d seen mine. Was it why he’d left the hospital when I’d been shot? “I lost the only person I ever cared about. Until the band.”
I closed my eyes as the wave of his words hit me. I knew the band was important to him. He took it really seriously and I was guessing that whatever happened in his childhood with his sister, the band had helped get him through that.
“I should’ve seen what was happening to her and stopped it. I could’ve found a way.” When he turned back around, I was taken aback by the clear liquid pooling in his eyes. Ream’s agony was written all over his features, the lines across his forehead, lowered brows and lips tight. He dragged a finger down his inner right arm over his tats then looked directly at me.