CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Two days later, Doug knocked on Kelsey’s door and waited. She and Jared were separated and the hell of it was, Doug didn’t know what to feel about that. On the one hand, his belief about her appeared to be validated. She didn’t make commitments to men. Maybe she just hadn’t found the right man.
On the other hand, he couldn’t rouse any sense of happiness, couldn’t anticipate his own eventual breaking of the spell surrounding this particular princess.
Ever since Amy had walked out of his life, he’d been lost in a fog. Dazed, angry and frustrated. After all, what the hell had he done that was so bad?
The apartment door opened and Kelsey stood there, her dark hair pulled away from her face, her skin scrubbed clean of make-up. He could tell she’d been crying.
“Hi, Kels,” he said, compassion stirring in him. She looked completely miserable.
“Doug,” she sniffed, reaching out to draw him inside. “H-how are y-you?”
Her face crumpled into a sob and before he knew it, he’d taken her into his arms, offering a comforting hug. He knew the pain slicing through her, knew the misery of greeting a new day.
Urging her over to the couch, Doug sat down next to Kelsey and tried to figure what to do next. Her face turned into his shoulder, she cried as if she were four years old.
With fingers that felt oddly numb, he smoothed her dark tangled hair and muttered “there, there” stupidly. Here she was, his fairy princess, retreating to his arms when the cold, cruel world had battered her heart again.
Doug kept patting and murmuring, but he felt as if his brain were in a deep freeze. Felt strange and restless. He’d come by her apartment after work, after Jared had tersely confirmed their separation.
He’d never seen the man so icily remote.
Why wasn’t he jubilant about this new development, Doug wondered, feeling detached from the drama.
“I should have m-married you,” Kelsey sobbed suddenly, her face tormented.
Doug froze. Clearing his throat a moment later, he felt something like panic clutching him around the throat even as his hand moved awkwardly up and down her arm.
She drew in a ragged breath. “But you love Amy and I love Jared. I think I’ll love him forever.”
“I’ve always cared for you,” Doug said, still reeling from his reaction to her previous words. Words he’d have given anything to hear six months ago.
“I love Jared,” she said again, tears drowning her blue eyes. Clutching at his lapels, Kelsey wept into his shoulder.
Doug stared at the clock on the table, its second hand moving forward in a precise, clicking of time. Unable to hear the ticking through Kelsey’s crying, some part of his brain tried to fill in the missing sound.
But the rest of him was hearing the words he had just said to her. He’d always cared for her? What a bizarre way to describe a ruling, consuming passion. Had she ever before mentioned the word “marriage” in relation to the two of them? She hadn’t been proposing to him, but still, just the thought of being married to her should have made him do somersaults. Instead, he’d felt…terror. Trapped.
She drew in a hiccupping sob, rubbing her cheek against the material of his coat sleeve. “I know you care. I’ve always been so comfortable with you. So safe.”
A flash of revulsion went through him, but Doug didn’t flinch or pull away. What was wrong with a woman feeling safe with a man? That didn’t preclude love. But as he sat there on Kelsey’s couch, his arm around the woman he’d always thought most beautiful in the world, his brain kept supplying him with pictures of…Amy. Amy welcoming him to her bed. Amy staring at his naked body as if she wanted to devour him.
Amy laughing at his jokes. Amy limp as a noodle when he rubbed her feet.
There’d been moments when she’d looked at him like he’d rocked her world. Not once had she told him she felt safe with him. For some reason, the thought felt like heresy to him, that Amy made him feel something better, bigger, than did her sister.
How could that be?
In a surge of something absurdly like guilt, he said again, “I’ve always cared about you, Kels.”
“I know,” she said, her voice low. “And I treated you badly. Took you for granted, but I’ve always loved you….”
Like a brother.
She didn’t say the words. Instead, they were screamed in his head. Kelsey loved him like a brother, wanted his comfort, his friendship. He offered her…safety from the world.
Sitting there, feeling strangely out of place, he realized that three months ago he’d have been proud to offer her just that. Now, he wondered if he himself hadn’t been hiding from the bad stuff. The heartache and disappointments. Had he used Kelsey—the fantasy of winning Kelsey—to fend off his own demons?