Two Can Play (Celeste and Dominic) novel Chapter 439

SCARLETT

For a long moment I could not move. I stood there with my hand frozen halfway to the apron, staring at Tasha while the echo of her voice bounced off the kitchen walls and slowly died. Speechless did not begin to cover it.

"Is everything okay, Tasha?" The question came out smaller than I meant it to. "Are you upset about something?"

She did not say a word. The silence where her answer should have been was louder than the shout.

"I did not know you felt this way." The words scraped on the way out. "I am sorry. I will not bother you anymore."

I could not remember the last time I had hurt like this. Losing Lynette. That was the only pain that sat heavier than this, in my chest.

I turned and walked out of the kitchen, slow and quiet, because my legs did not seem willing to carry me any faster. I was almost at the door when her voice caught me.

"Scarlett, wait!"

I stopped and turned. "What now?"

She crossed the kitchen in four quick steps and took my hand before I could pull it away. Her fingers were small and warm and trembling, her eyes wet. "I am sorry. I did not mean what I said. Any of it. You are the most important person in my life, Scarlett. You know that."

"Then why did you say it?"

She laughed, a real one, and then she left.

I stood alone in a kitchen full of vegetables and the echo of her words. Uncomfortable. No purpose. Under too much pressure. Something was going on with her, something I could not see, and the thought sat in my stomach like a stone.

I could not fix what I did not understand, and I could not live with myself if she was quietly drowning right under my nose. I had to ask her, had to get her to open up, no matter how long it took, because I wanted her life to be better and that was impossible if I did not know what was wrong.

I was halfway to the door, ready to take the stairs two at a time, when Sparrow came down them instead.

He reached the bottom of the staircase and stopped, and that was when I realized Tasha had stopped too. She had not gone far. She stood at the foot of the stairs with her hands clasped in front of her, looking at him the way a field mouse looks at a hawk.