A Pound of Flesh (A Pound of Flesh #1) (39 page)

Maybe she didn’t mean it.

Astonishingly, Carter’s heart paused at that particular thought.

“Kat,” he whispered. “Please.”

“I’m sorry.” Her voice shook.

Carter swallowed hard. He heard her sniff and tried to move his head to look at her, but she was too damned strong.

“Kat,” he admonished. “Look at me.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because I—I can’t. I shouldn’t have …”

At the sound of the words, he gripped her wrists from around his neck and pulled them away, keeping her body close to him with his hand on her cheek. His gaze wandered over her face in question. He saw she was crying, her face pained, and immediately a huge rock of discomfort lodged in his gut.

He smoothed her damp hair from her face. “What shouldn’t you have done?”

If it was a slip of the tongue—so to speak—then he wanted to hear her say it. As masochistic as it sounded, if Kat had said those words and not meant them, he had to know. He wanted to believe her, truly, but so many things in his mind made him doubt her words. He hated that there was any doubt at all, but he couldn’t help it. He’d been programmed that way: to be suspicious and untrusting. He closed his eyes for a moment, trying his damnedest to rid himself of the uncertainty coursing through him.

Kat stared down at where they were still connected. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

Carter slumped and watched her wipe at her tears. He let his hands drop to his sides in defeat. The warm postcoital sensation inside him turned cold.

“It’s all right,” he said in a rough voice. “It happens.”

He had no idea if that was true, but he wanted to make her feel better.

“What happens?” Kat pressed her palm tenderly in the center of his chest, tracing the cursive black ink with her fingertips.

Keeping his eyes on the flickering flames in the hearth, he answered: “I’m sure people say stuff like that a lot. You know, when they get carried away in the moment.” There was a second of complete silence where Kat tensed in his arms. Lightning lit the room sporadically.

Carter’s eyes fluttered closed when her hand touched his chin, bringing his face around to hers.

“You think I got lost in the moment?”

He shrugged.

Kat shook her head slowly from side to side and cleared her throat. “I didn’t get carried away, Wes.”

His name never sounded as good as it did when she said it. He held her stare, searching for any hint of a lie, but all her beautiful eyes told him was the truth.

“You didn’t?”

Her head continued to shake, as she mouthed silently,
No
.

His chest heaved, as he tried to regain thought and the ability to speak. “Wh—” His throat closed around the word. He swallowed, and tried again. “If you weren’t caught up in the moment,” he muttered, “why are you sorry?”

Kat drew invisible circles around Carter’s belly button. She stayed quiet for an age, driving Carter beyond distraction.

“I’m sorry because I didn’t want to say it that way. I didn’t know if you’d want to hear it. I was afraid you’d not want to hear it.” Gradually she brought her head up. “I didn’t want to say it while we were together this way.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s cliché. Tacky.”

“Kat.” He grabbed her wrists and shifted her back, sliding out of her body. He pulled her hands, clasping them over his heart. He breathed, collecting himself. “Did you mean it?”

His voice sounded so foreign. He felt so fucking small. Weak. Breakable.

Kat’s forehead dropped to his. She trembled against him.

“Yes,” she whispered. “I meant it. With everything that I am, I meant it.”

* * *

Saying those three words to him—as scary and unexpected as it was—had made Kat’s whole body light. She loved him with every part of herself, inside and out, good and bad, past and present.

His fingers were suddenly at her face, tracing her lips. “I want to hear it.” He shook his head in bewilderment. “I didn’t know how much until just now. Don’t ever be sorry about saying that.”

“But—”

He cut her off again with a burning kiss that made her toes curl. It was filled with lust, gratitude, and a long moan that came from his throat. He wanted to hear her say that she loved him. He wanted her to love him. Kat’s body folded into him in relief.

“Can I tell you something?” Carter asked quietly when their lips separated. “You’re the first person, the first person in my whole fuckin’ life, to ever say those words to me.”

Kat blinked.

“But your family,” she began, garnering an amused and sardonic expression from him. Okay. Of course not. “Your grandmother?” she hedged. “Friends?”

Carter’s eyes dropped to her mouth. “I was always ‘precious’ to Gran, and she did love me, but she never said the words. And my friends?” He chuckled. “We’re not exactly the huggy, affectionate types. Max is like my brother, but … no, we don’t say that to each other.”

Kat was astonished. How could the man before her never have heard anyone tell him that he was loved? What kind of parents would allow that? How could he have lived for so long with no one telling him how special he was?

Without words, she kissed him again.

“Don’t be sorry, for God’s sake,” he urged. “Christ, hearing those words from you … It doesn’t matter where or how you said it. What matters is that you said it at all.”

She held him close. With her lips by his ear, she whispered once more, “I love you.”

He squeezed her and placed a gentle kiss on her throat. “Thank you for being my first.”

She buried her nose into his buzzed hair. “Thank you for being mine.” Carter sat back, looking at her in question. “I’ve told people I love them before,” she clarified. “You know, family. But I’ve never felt this way about anyone, Carter.”

Carter’s grin lit the room.

“Wow.” He licked his lips and dropped his head against the back of the couch. He kept his eyes firmly on her. “Look at you.”

He continued to stare at her, holding her captive. Occasionally his mouth would open to speak, before he would close it again.

“It’s okay,” she soothed, running her palms down his sides. “Stop overthinking it.”

His body shook with laughter. He kissed her forehead. “You know me so well.”

“I do.” She sat up. She could see the battle: the fear in believing her and the hope that it was true. Her heart squeezed. “I didn’t say it to hear it back. It’s okay.”

“But—”

“No, Carter, really, I don’t need you to say it. And I don’t want you to think that you have to.” She stroked his face.

He stared up at her. “Why do you love me, Peaches?”

The absolute incomprehension in his expression crippled her. Kat trailed her thumb across his jaw as thunder crashed above the house.

“I love you because you’re very special.” She kissed his right cheek. “You’re generous.” His nose. “Caring.” His top lip. “Passionate.” His bottom lip. “And you are, without doubt, the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen.”

He leaned his forehead to her chin. “Christ, I …” He lifted his head sharply, eyes wild. “I have to show you how—why I— There’s more.”

She held his face in an effort to calm him. “Show me whatever you want. I’m not going anywhere.”

He lifted her from his lap. With her cell lighting the way in the darkness, she hurried with her clothes to the downstairs bathroom, cleaned herself up, and made it back to him in time for him to wrap a large blanket around her shoulders. He had a flashlight in his hand.

He held out his hand for her. “Come with me.”

Kat placed her hand in his palm and let him lead her up the stairs and along the corridor. He came to a stop outside the third door down from their room and put his hand on the knob. He turned it and pushed the door open. It creaked loudly, as though it hadn’t been used for a long time. Kat was hit with a rush of cold air and a musty, aged smell.

With only the flashlight and the intermittent glimpse of the moon through the storm clouds, it was hard to see much. The small room was decorated with dark wallpaper, interrupted only by posters of cars and baseball players. A corkboard hung by the closet, covered in drawings and ticket stubs. White dust sheets hid the furniture, and the small bed was unmade with the mattress bare and unused. Kat turned to face Carter, who was looking at her patiently.

“This was your room,” she stated.

He moved the flashlight over the walls, pausing on a picture of a Triumph. They both remained quiet until Carter placed his arm around her shoulders and guided her to the bed, where she sat down. He ran his hand through her hair once before he moved over to the closet. He mumbled and cursed when he opened it and started to pull out boxes of different sizes. He rifled through them slowly until he pulled out a small book held together with a rubber band.

He stood and moved back toward the bed, sitting down next to her with a long breath. He placed the book on Kat’s now crossed legs, staring at it as though it would jump up and attack him. Kat moved her hand to Carter’s right knee and gave it a reassuring squeeze.

Carter scratched his chin with the side of his thumb. “This is kind of a— It’s a diary,” he stuttered. “It sounds stupid, I know, but after …” He paused. “I just think it’ll explain things better.”

“You want me to read it?”

He laughed humorlessly. “Yeah, I— Fuck, Kat, I don’t know.”

His nervousness was troubling. “Okay.”

With tense fingers, she pulled the rubber band off the book while Carter opened the small bedroom window and sparked a cigarette. Kat placed the rubber band on the bed and opened the front cover.

What she saw made her blink in astonishment and suck in a quick breath of shock.

Her head snapped up to Carter who shrugged apologetically. Stuck untidily on the first yellowing page was an article reporting the death of one Senator Daniel Lane. There was a black-and-white picture of him and Kat’s mother taken on the day of his election. He was so happy and so handsome. Eva looked beautiful, too. She smiled a smile that Kat hadn’t seen in a long time. Kat’s heart clenched with yearning for the mother who’d told her daughter she could be anything she wanted.

Kat’s eyes skimmed the article, knowing what she would find, the details she would read. Words jumped out at her in the flashlight beam: “horrifying,” “distraught,” “brain hemorrhage,” “police shot two suspects.” She swallowed hard and let her fingertips slide over her daddy’s face.

Gingerly, making sure she didn’t damage the paper, Kat turned the page. There were more articles detailing the funeral, the foundation set up in her father’s honor, and the events Eva had attended in Daniel’s memory. In each grainy picture of her mother, Kat noticed how she aged. The beauty and radiance so noticeable in the first picture had all but disappeared.

Her eyes pricked with tears. As they moved over the article, she realized that every time her own name appeared, it was either underlined or circled. It was the same on all the articles, including the first.

Silently she continued through the book, glancing at the articles he’d collected. She stopped when she came to a page covered in spidery handwriting. The first date was a month after Kat’s father had died.

I dreamed of
her
again. Every time I close my eyes, she’s there. She haunts me and I don’t know why. Ever since that night, she’s been inside my brain. I wish I could scoop her out like Gran used to do with the chocolate ice cream out of the freezer, but then … I think maybe I would miss her.

Two weeks later:

I smelled her today. I was with Max and we walked past a fruit stall. Peaches. Sweet peaches. Her hair smelled of peaches. I bought some. Max called me a freak. I think he’s right.

Two days later:

I am crazy. I know I am. I saw her. I know I did. But it’s impossible.

Christmas:

Dad and I argued. He called me ungrateful. I called him a prick. He found my smokes. I lay on my bed and closed my eyes and I saw her and smelled her hair again. Fucking crazy, right?
It calmed me down. I think that if I helped her that night then maybe she wouldn’t mind that I use her this way. Maybe she wouldn’t care. Maybe she doesn’t even remember me.

Kat continued to read. The passages were small, no more than five lines each, but gargantuan in their significance. The hand that covered her open, disbelieving mouth became wet with tears. At the same time, the bed moved with Carter’s weight. He wrapped his arms around his knees. He was uncharacteristically still at her side.

New Year:

February:

“Carter,” Kat choked, reading the words from
The Merchant of Venice
.

“I’m sorry. Shit. I knew I shouldn’t have— I just wanted you to understand.”

“What did you want me to understand?”

She needed him to explain. Reading his deepest thoughts was almost too much.

He took the book from her hand, thumbing through it, smiling wryly at some of his words and closing his eyes at others.

“That night,” he started quietly. “The night we met. That night was the longest, most terrifying night of my life.” He smiled. “But I wouldn’t change it, not for a fucking thing.” He touched the diary almost reverently. “I started this when I was eleven years old. Sixteen years ago.” His voice seemed far away to Kat’s ears.

His eyes flickered to her hair. “Kat, your smell was— It was like it took over my brain. I couldn’t think about anything else. It calmed me when I was ready to murder my father, and even when I was at Arthur Kill, I would go back to that night and think about you. Those were the nights I slept the soundest.”

He put the book to his side and clasped her hands. “I don’t want to freak you out with this shit, I really don’t, but hearing you say those words and not being able to say them back …” He shook his head. “I hoped this would help you see.” He gazed at her. “Do you understand, Kat? Do you understand what you are to me?”