My heart’s sprinting in my chest. Why would he be nice? Why this sudden change? I want to reach out with both hands and take his olive branch, just as much as I want to protect myself and snap it clean in two. “So you were just being . . . nice?”
He throws out his arms in a gesture of helplessness. “Yes, though apparently little good that’s doing me!”
Ah, there’s the truth. Little good it’s doing him. My heart sinks. “This nice-guy act is about you, then. I see. Given that”—I shove the flowers at him—“leave me out of it.”
Two steps past him, and I can’t do it. I backtrack and yank the flowers out of his arms. “Never mind, I’m taking these.”
“Kate,” he calls as I start to power walk down the sidewalk. “Wait!”
“No!” I yell over my shoulder. I’m walking as fast as I can, but even my long legs are no match for his. “Go away, Christopher.”
“I can’t let you walk home alone, Kate,” he says, slapping the crosswalk button for pedestrians. He waits, but I cross the street, a car whizzing between us.
“I don’t want to talk to you,” I yell.
Except, God, I really do. I have so many questions, even though I’m scared of the answers. I’m scared I’ll like his answers. And if I like those answers, I’m scared most of how easily I could lower my guard and let him in.
“I won’t talk, then,” he calls back. “I’ll walk you home, and then I’ll go, I promise.”
I’m about to tell Christopher where he can shove his promise when I notice a guy walking toward me down a perpendicular sidewalk. My shoulders tense. I’ve been on my own long enough to trust my instincts about these things. Immediately, I turn and close the distance between me and Christopher, falling into step beside him. The man pauses when he notices Christopher now beside me, then he starts toward the street, like he’s going to cross.
My heart pounds. I’m waiting for some snide remark from Christopher about his point being made, but none comes. Instead, he sets a hand low on my back and takes one smooth step around me so he’s walking on the outside of the sidewalk, his body close to mine, shielding me from the man.
I scowl, despising myself for the rush of relief cascading through me. I don’t need protection. Or care. But some small part of me that’s been alone for so long, that’s worn out from having to always look over my shoulder, assume the worst, be on the defense, stretches out and sighs like a cat in its favorite sunny corner.
I don’t want to like how he’s behaving. But I do.
After three long blocks of spinning my gears, I peer up at him, my curiosity about this odd one-eighty too intense to keep me from examining him.
He frowns into the distance, hands in his pockets. Then he glances my way and catches me staring at him.
“You really do look like shit,” I tell him honestly.
He sighs tiredly. “I feel like shit.”
I can’t manage to ignore the band of concern squeezing my ribs. “What’s wrong? Make yourself less than a million dollars today? Were you for once in your life turned down by someone with a square head on their shoulders?”
His mouth lifts faintly at the corner as he stares back ahead. “I wish it were that simple. You, on the other hand,” he says, throwing me another one of those charm-the-pants-off-a-nun looks, “do not look like someone who chugged a quarter bottle of whiskey and slept half the night in a closet.”
“Stop it.”
His eyes widen again, that Casanova smile slipping. “Stop what?”
“Saying nice things you don’t mean. Flirting. I look underslept and hungover, my hair’s a bird’s nest, I smell like the whiskey I’m still titrating out of my system, and we both know it.”
“I know what you’re doing, and it doesn’t work like that. You can’t gross me out, Kate. I’ve seen it all with you. You’ve literally shit on me before. And puked, for that matter.”
I glare at him. “I was an infant.”
“With a vendetta against dashing elementary school boys.”
“More like with a prophetic gift for recognizing little shits when I meet them,” I mutter.
He slaps a hand over his heart. “I’m wounded.”
“Like you care what I think.”
Peering my way, Christopher sighs heavily, the teasing humor suddenly drained between us. He stops walking, and I stop, too. “Kate . . .”
“You promised no talking.”