Spitfire in Love (Chasing Red 3)

“Omigod, these are so ripe. Yummy,” she said happily.

“Give me one. I’m hungry now too.”

I wasn’t sure if she would. We’d been apart for weeks, and I wasn’t sure how she would react to such an intimate request.

When she offered it to me, I felt something warm inside my chest.

I took a big bite, my tongue grazing her finger. She pulled away, and I could feel her intense gaze on my face. I pretended not to notice. I chewed, swallowed.

“Again,” I said.

“No.” She pulled away. She hadn’t forgiven me yet. I understood. But it made me…sad. And dampened the happy mood we had.

It was all right. I would fix it soon.

“My hands are sticky. I need tissues,” she said and opened my glove box. I heard her sharp inhale. She reached for something inside it.

“I saw you wearing this on Monday,” she said. “Did you miss me that much?”

She had the blue hair tie I stole from her in her hand. It had been a month ago, but it seemed longer than that. My eyes shifted to hers. Her hazel eyes were glittering. Grass green, I thought with a hitch in my heart, more than brown.

“Yes,” I said gruffly.

“Then why…”

“I was an idiot. I’m sorry, Kara,” I whispered.

I swallowed the tightness in my throat. I wanted to pull to the side of the road, park there, so I could right the wrongs that happened between us.

“You made me worry,” she said.

“I’m sorry.” It seemed such an inconsequential word. I wanted to show her how I felt, not say it.

“I don’t want your sorry,” she said. “I want an explanation.”

I stopped myself from rubbing a hand over my face. “I’ll tell you what I can when we reach our destination.”

She quieted, content for now. She wouldn’t be for long.

The thought of opening up made my heart flip in my chest.

I had seen psychiatrists when I was a kid. My dad had insisted that Raven send me to see professionals after the incident when I was eight. When Raven refused, he threatened to take custody of me. That scared her into action.

All of the doctors I’d seen tried their best to make me talk about what happened, but I had refused. In fact, I hadn’t talked for a couple of years after the incident.

I still didn’t want to. But for Kara I would try.

It hurt to talk about it. Every time I thought about it or tried to talk about it, it felt like there was a pit of nothingness in my stomach and acid was filling it up.

She perked up in her seat when I turned my signal on, slowed down, and pulled up to a service station.

“What do you want to eat?” I unbuckled my seat belt, grabbed my wallet from the compartment in the middle console. “I’ll get it. Stay here.”

“I’ll go with you,” she said and simply jumped out of the truck.

I smiled. She didn’t like to be told what to do and would do the opposite if I even brought it up.

She looked exhausted. I wondered if she’d been picking up shifts at the nursing home again, if she’d quit her job at the coffee shop. Hopefully now that she worked for Rick, that would lessen.