Page 29 of My Favorite Bad Decision (The Favorites #1)

29

MILLER

I left the Hamptons a decade ago because I had to.

Maren and I had been…unhappy. On edge. Faking it. I had no idea how to explain that I couldn’t see a future with her, but I also didn’t want it to end.

I didn’t understand it myself.

We were there for her birthday, and the only bright spot of the entire week was Kit.

She looked so much like Maren, but increasingly, I found no similarity between them. Maren was sweet, but Kit was challenging. Maren’s eyes smiled and Kit’s flashed. Maren was pleasant, while Kit had a sauciness to her, a thing that said, ‘ I dare you to try. ’

She sassed me at every turn. She made fun of my swim trunks, called me a freeloader, asked me if I planned to devote myself entirely to defending rich douchebags when I finished law school or if I might consider defending other types of rich people too. In turn, I made fun of her taste in music, her bad temper, her sweet tooth, her ambition.

I wanted to take care of her—not the way an adult wants to care for a child, but the way I’d want to step up for anyone I saw being taken advantage of. Because Ulrika had, at some point, decided she and Maren were too fragile to fight their own battles and that she’d needed a sword, so Kit had fashioned herself into one.

Go tell those photographers to get off the property, Ulrika would command, and Kit, all curves in her tiny black bikini, would go out to tell them off.

Go tell the hostess we want our table. Tell that man to stop taking pictures of me.

I fucking hated it a little more every day, and that final morning in the Hamptons, when Maren let her dumb friends hit on Kit as if she wasn’t five years younger, it all came to a head. It was the only fight Maren and I ever had—she insisted Kit could defend herself just fine, and I insisted that she shouldn’t have to.

But I still didn’t put it together until that moment in the kitchen.

Kit had left the beach, and I knew why—because I’d been a dick to her. Because I’d wanted her gone, though not for the reasons she thought.

I went back to the house, presumably to refill the cooler, but mostly to check on her. She was sitting on the kitchen counter, still in that tiny black bikini, with one of her cherry popsicles.

I wanted to tease her. I wanted her to fight me a little, to let me know she was okay. “Is that why you left the beach? So you could sit up here and eat popsicles in peace? Maybe I’ll have one too.”

But she didn’t fight back. She licked down the side of the popsicle and I turned toward the fridge, wincing.

“You guys didn’t want me there,” she said. Blunt, but that was Kit. Either she was fighting with you, or she was brutally admitting things other people would not.

I hated it. I hated that we hadn’t wanted her. I hated that she knew.

“That’s not true,” I said, turning toward her.

Her mouth was around the popsicle. As she pulled it out of her mouth, it made this noise that seemed to suck all the air from the room. I couldn’t stop staring at her cherry-stained lips, at her pretty pink tongue.

“Yes, it is. You should realize by now it takes more than that to hurt my feelings.”

Her mouth on that popsicle, her tongue sliding over it…I was frozen, fighting a realization that was arriving far later than it should have. “That wasn’t about you,” I’d replied, trying to think of anything else. “It was about that kid she knows from Columbia who kept hitting on you.”

Kit’s tongue coasted over the popsicle. A trickle of juice ran down her chin, and I thought my knees were going to buckle. “Why would it matter?” she asked. She caught the dripping juice with her finger and sucked it between her lips. And then it was the popsicle again.

That motherfucking popsicle.

“Because he’s five years older than you.”

“But why does it matter, Miller?” she asked.

And that was when it finally hit me. That I’d spent the whole goddamn summer with Maren because I wanted her seventeen-year-old sister. Desperately. That it mattered because I was fucking sick with jealousy and couldn’t admit it to myself. That the reason I hadn’t been able to call the time of death on the thing with Maren, a thing I knew couldn’t make me happy, wasn’t because we had something.

It was because she was the only way I could stay near Kit.

And no matter who I’ve been with since then, she was still what I wanted.

The past two weeks have been hell, the worst of my fucking life. The one thing keeping me going is a single text from Kit’s dad, saying, “ She’ll come around. She’s as miserable as you are .”

But that was two weeks ago, and in the meantime, there’s been a blizzard, followed by a balmy spring day, and it’s as if the seasons are changing and the whole world is moving forward, while I’m going to remain stuck in the same goddamn place I was a decade ago.

Dying for a girl I couldn’t have. One I still can’t have.

I leave my office at dusk. Spring is in the air, and New York has emptied itself into the streets to celebrate. I want to be out here with her, walking hand in hand. I want to be planning our night, our weekend, our summer, our entire fucking lives.

But she’s still worried about her sister and mourning someone she lost years ago. I can’t demand she stop. It’ll take time, if she comes around at all.

I love her enough to wait. I love her enough to sit here like a jackass, hoping she comes around and to accept that a part of her still belongs to someone else.

But it really sucks to love her that much, that wholeheartedly, when she can’t love me back the same way.

My sister calls. She’s been my sounding board about all things Kit- and Maren-related for a very long time.

“Hey,” I say.

“You’re moping,” she replies. “Walking and moping. I can hear it in your voice.”

“I realize it’s counterintuitive but calling me on my bad mood doesn’t actually do a lot to improve my bad mood.”

“Come over,” she says. “I’ll make you dinner.”

“No offense, Ro, but that’s unlikely to improve my mood either.”

She laughs. “Jesus, you’re an asshole when you’re moping. I’d forgotten. I’ll order in.”

“I think I just need to be on my own tonight,” I tell her, “but I appreciate it.”

We end the call and not two seconds later, the phone buzzes. Which I assume means Rowan has told my mom or Leila that I’m upset, and they’ll hound me for the rest of the fucking night.

Sighing heavily, I retrieve the phone again. I swear to God, I’d just turn it off if I wasn’t still hoping to hear from?—

Kit. It’s Kit who’s texted.

Kit

Hey, are you around? Can we talk?

It doesn’t sound like she’s saying she’s had a change of heart. It sounds like the text you send before you explain how final your decision is.

I want to ignore it, just to prolong the inevitable, but because I love Kit Fischer, because I want to be the one person who never leaves her uncertain, or scared, or gnawed with dread, I text her back.

I’m nearly home. Do you want me to call?

Kit

I’ll come over if that’s okay.

I start to make a joke about dumping people by text, but it’s all too raw. I can’t bring myself to do it.

Of course.

I’m already at my building. I get upstairs, take a quick shower, and change into sweats. I consider allowing her to see all the signs of my devastation: the pizza boxes I haven’t recycled, the bottle of whiskey I emptied myself, the clothes I abandoned on the floor because I no longer fucking care about anything. But I’m not going to make her feel guilty. She gets enough of that from everyone else.

I’ve just shoved the last of the clothes in the closet when the doorman calls to ask if she can come up. I tell him it’s fine, and two minutes later she knocks on the door. I spent my entire shower trying to read something into her texts, and as I turn the deadbolt, I’m trying to read into her knock. Was it reluctant? Was it nervous? Is she just here to retrieve something she left behind? Was it the knock of a woman about to deliver the final blow? She basically already did that, so doing it once more seems unnecessary.

I open the door and she stands there in all her glory: beige wrap dress under a matching coat. Bright red heels, bright red lips. All that glorious hair hanging around her shoulders. A small, nervous smile.

The nervous smile makes my heart sink. It’s the smile of a woman delivering bad news.

I step aside, and she walks past me. Two weeks ago, she’d have buried her face in my chest the second she saw me, but not anymore. She walks into the kitchen, then turns, as if bracing herself, I can’t keep waiting for the final blow.

I run a hand through my hair. “Kit, just?—”

“I talked to my dad,” she says at the same time.

“You go first,” we say simultaneously.

Her eyes fill and there’s a buzzing sound in my brain as I wait.

“My dad told me that the reason you left the Hamptons was because of me,” she whispers.

My laugh is equal parts surprise and misery. Is this why she’s here? To dig up shit from a decade ago? “I assumed you knew.”

She shakes her head. “How could I possibly have known?”

It takes all my restraint not to pull her against me. “How couldn’t you have known? I was two seconds from pouncing when I left you in the kitchen that day. It was the most sexually charged moment of my life until our second moment in the kitchen.”

She blinks back tears. “You left because you were protecting me.”

I hitch a shoulder. “What was I supposed to do? You were seventeen. A five-year age difference at that point in our lives…it was way too much. You were still in high school, for God’s sake.”

She brushes at her eyes. “I’m not quibbling with you about it. But I just never realized what a well-established pattern it is.”

“What pattern?”

“You giving things up on my behalf,” she whispers, leaning against the counter behind her. “You having my back when no one else does.”

I can’t stand being apart from her. I can’t. Even if she’s about to dump me again. I close the distance, letting my hand rest on her hip, and pressing my mouth to the top of her head. “I know you can’t hurt Maren. I know you’re still getting over Rob. But no matter how long that goes on and no matter who else comes into your life…I will always have your back.”

“I spread the ashes.”

I step back, stunned. “ What? ”

“In Central Park. Rob and I had a date there once. And it wasn’t about me still being in love with Rob. It was just about me clinging to a time when I was happy. I don’t need to cling. You make me happy. You make me happier than anyone ever has.”

My hand tightens around her hip. “But Maren?—”

“I told her,” she says. “And it wasn’t perfect, but it was okay.”

I stare. I was so convinced she was coming here to deliver one final death blow…and I’m still waiting for her to deliver it.

“But?” I ask. “I still hear a but coming.”

She exhales heavily. “But I need to know about the ponytail holder. I mean...I know you were seeing someone in Germany before and that’s fine, but...is it over? I heard it wasn’t over.”

I blink. “ What? You mean Tatiana? That ended over the holidays, and it wasn’t a big deal even then.”

“But you flew to Germany, and her hair tie was sitting right there?—”

That was the hesitation I sensed, the uncertainty. She wasn’t unsure about what she wanted. She was unsure about what I wanted.

“Wait,” I demand. I go to my nightstand and withdraw a wooden box I bought in Tanzania, and then return to the kitchen to hand it to her. “I flew to Germany because I had a meeting there. I didn’t even see her. And the hair tie?” I place the box in her hand. “It was yours.”

“Mine? But I’d never been here before.”

“Open it, Kit,” I tell her softly, so she does.

Inside, she sees the hair tie—which I slipped off her head the day I was washing her hair and wore around my wrist for the rest of the trip. Alongside it, there’s the fortune she gave me at the Chinese restaurant, and the shell necklace she made me at Starfish Cay, and her boarding pass from the flight home.

All these meaningless little things I held onto solely because I was trying to keep a tiny piece of her if I couldn’t have them all.

Her eyes fill with tears. “I was worried you’d already moved on.”

My palms cradle her face. “I’ve been in love with you for a decade. You really think I wouldn’t wait two more weeks?”

I kiss her. Her soft lips open, and her tongue tastes like mint. I reach inside her coat to grab her hips tight, but she resists. “Miller…just so you have all the information up front, I’m pretty sure I want to go back to med school. I don’t know where I’ll be the next few years and?—”

I lift her up and set her on the counter, my favorite place for her.

“I just want to grow old with you, Kit Fischer,” I tell her. “And I’m going to follow you for as long as you let me.”

She bites her lower lip. “You’re moving awfully fast for a guy whose fear of commitment is legendary.”

“I was never scared of committing. I just didn’t want to commit to anyone but you,” I reply. “Now I simply need to get our families and the press together for a big, public proposal.”

She grins. “We only started officially dating thirty seconds ago.”

I tug her skirt up enough that I can push her legs apart and step between them.

“Have I ever told you my grandfather built a library to get me into school? When the Wests do things, we don’t go halfway.”

She laughs and presses her lips to mine. “Thank you for finally admitting that.”