“I didn’t know you were ever married.” Already, her voice was a little softer than before.
“For ten years. Lost Alice five years ago.”
“Oh, Jed.” The whisper-soft noise of her feet against tile rang in his ears again, strangely loud. “I’m so sorry. I had no idea.”
She was so close now that he felt the heat radiating from her body. Straightening, he stood and closed the fridge, a carton of eggs cradled in one arm. “It was cancer.”
“No one ever mentioned it. I—”
“It’s all right.” A pang of guilt struck him deep in his chest as he met her eyes. They were so wide, still shining, but not with her early-bird cheerfulness. “I just didn’t want to keep it a secret. Everyone else knows.” Most or all of Hot Ink’s staff, anyway. Maybe not Mina, who’d only been working in the shop for a few months, but the rest… James and Tyler had known Alice, and the others had been there long enough to hear the stories.
“I feel terrible for bringing it up.”
“Don’t. If I couldn’t bear thinking about her, I’d have put the teapot away. You’re fine.”
“Okay.” She didn’t say anything else about it, but she stayed close by his side and helped him make the pancakes even though it was so easy that two people complicated the process more than simplified. He didn’t mind the closeness, the rubbing of elbows and the soft whip of her t-shirt hem against his thigh. But he minded the way her sunniness had disappeared, replaced by a more somber version of the Karen who’d twirled up to the table just minutes ago.
As they ate the pancakes and sipped coffee together, she blushed a little when she told him how much she’d enjoyed the night before. Her words and the way she looked up at him from beneath her lashes were enough to make him fully hard beneath the table. Still, he didn’t dare take her in his arms and loose himself in loving her again, because the sunlight that filtered through the nearest window illuminated the way she checked her smiles, the way she glanced at him every now and then as if searching his face for something that worried her.
He should never have brought her back to his apartment. Five years had passed since Alice’s death, but the place was still a museum of his grief; the kitchen alone held so many of her things, from the teapot to the little drawer full of decorative towels to the old tins of loose leaf tea that lurked in the back of a cupboard. He didn’t use any of them, but he didn’t get rid of them, either – how could he?
Karen was brighter and warmer than the sunlight that backlit her, lending her hair a fiery sheen. It had been wrong of him to bring her to a place where she felt the need to suppress herself and whatever happiness she possessed, and it was wrong of him to keep her there. When she said that she had a Sunday afternoon portrait session she needed to prepare for, he did his best to ignore the stabbing feeling of longing the idea of her departure filled him with.
As he waited at the table while she dressed in the bedroom, being alone in the kitchen didn’t feel as natural as it usually did.
When she paused at the door and pressed her mouth gently against his, he fell back into the trap of passion, completely and selfishly. For a few moments, he kissed her deeply, until he thought his lips might bruise. His cock was hard, aching like the rest of him, and her body was so soft and hot against him that he had to remind himself why he couldn’t just keep her there, pressed against the doorframe, forever. Mentally cataloguing all of Alice’s kitchen items, he pictured Karen as she’d looked when she’d apologized for offering to make tea.
“Are you closing the shop tonight?” she asked when he finally ended the kiss and pulled back.
“Yeah. I’m opening too, in about two hours. That leaves plenty of time for me to give you a ride home.”
“Thanks.”
His feelings of guilt hadn’t faded by the time he pulled up in front of her apartment building. There, he clutched the wheel as he remembered his first impulsive, selfish mistake – kissing her instead of letting her walk inside untouched. He made the same mistake again, stroking his tongue along the seam of her mouth and inside, where it entwined with hers, before she opened the passenger side door.
“You mind if I give you a call tonight, after I close up?” he asked, knowing he couldn’t not say anything.
She smiled, and her genuine expression wrenched something deep inside him painfully. “I’ll talk to you then.”
He watched her climb the stairs and disappear into her apartment. Alone again, he pulled away from the curb and tried to figure out what he’d say to her that night, how he could possibly convey the truth – which was that he had nothing to offer her – in a way that she’d believe.