I’d only been in there long enough to change when I heard two knocks on my wall. I turned to find Rhys leaning against a wall with his arms folded across his chest.
“Why are you crying then?”
“I’m crying because I have no fucking clue what I’m going to do, and this entire situation is tearing me up!”
He watched me for a minute before asking, “Do you want me to leave, Kennedy?”
My first thought was to yell at him that I’d already told him to leave, and he’d stayed. But I found myself saying, “I want you to leave because you broke my heart. I don’t want you to leave because like I said, I have no idea what I’m going to do . . . and if you leave now, I’ll always wonder later what I would have decided if you’d stayed.”
With a nod, he pushed away from the wall and took a step back toward the door. “I, uh . . . I used your shower while you were gone.”
“That’s fine, Rhys.”
“If you need anything while you’re at work—”
“I know. But we’re fine,” I said, cutting him off. He’d made the same offer yesterday, but I didn’t need anything from him at the moment—nor did I want him to do anything for me.
A few more seconds passed before he took another step back and grabbed on to the doorframe. Just before he turned to go, he said, “I’m sorry, Kennedy. I’m so sorry.”
“I know,” I repeated, but this time the words were barely audible.
Kira turned the corner in the hall to walk toward my bedroom, and mumbled an apology to Rhys when she bumped into him before looking up at me. “You ready?”
“Yeah. Yeah, let’s go.”
The only good-bye between Rhys and me was a long look as I walked through the living room. He looked hurt again, like he had when I’d left the house earlier . . . but I couldn’t let myself get too focused on his expression. While I didn’t like that he was hurting, I couldn’t feel bad for him. I didn’t know how he’d expected me to be waiting for him after all those years, and after the kind of good-bye he’d given me. I didn’t know what he’d expected to find when he showed up at my door. But he couldn’t blame me for going on with my life.
“Okay, tell me what happened with Liam,” Kira said as soon as we were in the car and she was reversing out of the spot.
“He was mad . . . obviously. He was mad that I’d kept my marriage from him, and wanted to know if I ever would have told him. He told me he loved me—”
“He did?” Kira asked, surprise coating her short question.
“Yeah.”
“What did you say? Did you leave—wait, is that why you were crying?”
“No,” I said on a humorless laugh. “We kind of fought about the whole love thing because of something I’d heard about him, and what he knew about me. But I’m pretty sure I was already crying before that. I’m not sure, though, I don’t know when I started.”
Kira was quiet for a few seconds, then asked, “Would you have?”
“Would I have what?”
“Told him,” she explained. “Would you have told him about Rhys?”
I told her all about the mini-conversation Liam and I’d had during the movie on Friday night. I told Kira his question about our new tattoos, what my response had been, and what we’d talked about Saturday morning before Rhys had shown up. Unlike her usual self, Kira never once interrupted me while I told her everything. She just looked over at me with shocked expressions every once in a while, and when I was done, she let out a huff.
“Wow.”
“That’s pretty much how I feel,” I mumbled, and stared out the window.
“Dad called me again . . .” She trailed off, her tone hinting at what she wasn’t saying.
“I know, he called me too. I didn’t answer.”
“Kennedy, you can’t keep ignoring him. He’s our dad.”
I glanced over at her with wide eyes. “Yeah, and I just found out a few days ago that he’d kept a secret from me for four years! I think I’m allowed to not want to talk to him after that. From what Mom told us about when they met, you think Dad would understand by now that keeping the whole undercover thing a secret while you’re in a relationship is a bad thing.”
Kira sighed, and I knew she didn’t agree with me. But she couldn’t understand. Dad hadn’t kept anything from her the way he had with me. And from what I was hearing from Mom, I wasn’t the only one who was ignoring him. She was just as mad as I was that he’d let me go through all that pain without ever saying a word to anyone—including her.