Chapter 38 BREAKING POINT

Chapter 38 BREAKING POINT
The three days after the garage encounter had been quiet, even though the silence seemed to mean that all wasn't well. Kira had kept to her usual routine of coming to breakfast at the right time, polite conversation at dinner, and the occasional visit to the library where she continued her careful search through whatever materials she could access. She had not gone back to the garage or even thought to find Rex at the garden wall. She told herself that it was because Vanessa was watching and that the sensible thing was to reduce any visible contact until they had a clearer picture of what Vanessa was planning.
It was past eleven when she went downstairs. She had been reading for hours and her eyes were tired and she wanted something to eat. The ground floor was dark except for the kitchen light and she pushed the door open expecting to find the room empty.
Rex was standing at the stove with his back to her, heating milk in a small pan. He had not heard her come in, so she stood in the doorway for a second and was about to step back into the corridor when she stumbled upon a discarded plastic bottle.
Rex turned around at the sound.
They looked at each other across the kitchen, and neither of them spoke for a moment.
"I was just getting a snack," Kira said. "I'll come back."
"Don't." His voice was firm and she stopped moving. He turned back to the stove and stirred the milk again before turning the heat off. "Sit down, Kira."
"Rex, it's already late."
"Sit down."
Something in the way he said it made her pull out the stool at the kitchen counter and sit. She watched him pour the hot chocolate into two mugs, place one in front of her, and wrap both hands around the other one. He did not sit too… Instead, he stood on the opposite side of the counter and looked at her and she could see that he had been carrying something for days and had run out of room to keep carrying it.
"You're doing it again," he said.
"I told you, I've just been busy with…"
"Don't." He shook his head. "Don't give me the busy explanation. You've been avoiding me for  days and we both know why and I want you to just say it instead of pretending it's just about Vanessa watching or being careful or whatever version of the reason you've been telling yourself."
Kira held the mug he had given her tighter. "I saw what I saw in the kitchen that night, Rex."
"You saw her come at me," Rex said. "You saw me resist all her advances. What you decided after that was your interpretation and it was wrong."
"Rex…"
"She kissed me,” he snapped at her. “And I didn't even kiss her back. I just froze for a moment because she caught me off guard and because she knows exactly how to use history to do that to me, and then I pushed her away. That is what happened." He put his mug down on the counter. "I told you that same night and you walked away and you have been walking away from me in one form or another ever since."
Kira looked at him. "It wasn't just that night."
"Then tell me what it was."
She was quiet for a moment. "Vanessa said things. In the library. About how you operate with women and what your loyalty actually looks like when it's tested."
Rex let out a short breath. "And you believed her."
"I didn't say I believed her. I said it got into my head. There's a difference."
"She knew exactly what she was doing," he said. "She went to you specifically because she knows that's where I'm vulnerable. Not my father, not the business, not any of the other things she could have gone after. She came for you because she could see from the first day she walked into this house that you were the thing that mattered."
Kira kept her eyes on her mug and said nothing.
Rex came around the counter and stopped a few feet from her. When he spoke again, his voice was lower and what replaced the initial coldness was something different.

"I watch you sit next to my father at that table every morning," he said. "I watch him put his hand on you and I watch you smile at him and I know why you're doing it and I know it's strategy and I know you're in control of it and it still takes everything I have to sit there and eat my breakfast and say nothing."
Kira looked up at him.

"I'm not saying that to make you feel guilty," Rex said. "I'm just saying it because you deserve to know the truth of where I am. Not Vanessa's version, Kira… Mine." He stopped and rubbed the back of his neck and looked away from her for a moment. "You matter to me, Kira. Not as an ally or a strategy, but you. And I am exhausted from pretending in this house that you don't."
His voice broke slightly on the last few words and he stopped talking and just stood there and Kira watched him. She felt the impact of what he had just handed her, and she didn't realize when she got off from the stool without thinking and went to put her arms around him.

He went still for a moment. Then his arms came around her and he pulled her in close and held her back and she could feel the tension in his body slowly releasing, like something that had been wound too tight for too long finally being allowed to let go. She pressed her face against his shoulder and neither of them said anything. The mugs sat cooling on the counter, while the stove light burned above them. Outside the house was completely still.
They stayed like that, just holding on, and it was the most honest thing that had happened between them since she arrived in this house.

In the corridor outside, Vanessa had been on her way to the kitchen for a glass of water when she heard Rex's voice. She had stopped walking and stood in the dark corridor and listened, and what she heard made her move forward very slowly until she could see through the gap where the kitchen door sat slightly open.
She stood there and looked at the two of them holding each other in the warm kitchen light and she did not move. She pressed herself against the wall and stayed very still and watched and waited to see if this would become something more than an embrace.

Her phone was already in her hand.