Chasing His Kickass Luna Back Chapter 309

Abby

After some convincing, I manage to get Karl to sit down so I can address his bleeding hand. His demeanor is belligerent, tinged with the kind of stubbornness that only comes hand-in-hand with the overconsumption of alcohol.

“Just stop,” he grumbles as I approach with the first aid kit. “I’m fine, and besides, you don’t need to waste your precious time on something so meaningless and stupid.”

His words sting, but I push past the hurt, focusing on the task at hand. I know he’s just drunk and angry, and this isn’t like him at all. “Karl, just shut up and let me help you,” I insist.

Finally, Karl seems to relent and allows me to look at the cut. I can’t help but cringe a bit as I inspect it; it’s deep, deeper than I expected, and there are a few little bits of glass sitting on top of the wound.

“I need to get these out,” I say, gesturing to the glass.

Karl nods, allowing me to get out the tweezers. But as I gently touch his hand with the tweezers, before I can even touch the glass itself, he winces and jerks away, growling under his breath as if his wolf side is bubbling to the surface.

Frustration bubbles inside of me as well, and I can’t help but growl back. “Stop being such a baby, Karl,” I snap through my teeth, my patience wearing thin.

Much to my surprise, he relents, his brown eyes widening briefly before actually softening a bit. “Fine,” he mutters, although there’s less heat to his voice now. He allows me to clean his wound, sitting in silence as I work. I can’t keep myself from noticing the way that his gaze continually flickers over my face, lingering on my eyes, but I choose to ignore him.

As I disinfect the cut, I decide to confront the elephant in the room. “So, what exactly did you think you overheard earlier?” I ask, my tone cautious.

Karl shifts uncomfortably in his seat. “I heard you talking to Chloe. About ending things with me,” he admits, his voice filled with more pain than I would have expected. “You said it was stupid, and that it was over.”

I sigh, feeling a mix of annoyance and empathy. I did say those things, but I didn’t mean them in the way that he thinks. “Karl, that’s not the whole story,” I explain as I continue to clean his wound. “You missed a large portion of what was actually said, thanks to your eavesdropping and jumping to conclusions.”

He looks at me, confusion etched into his features. “Enlighten me, then,” he says. “Because the message sounded pretty loud and clear to me.”

I feel my shoulders tense at his words, his brown eyes boring into me. To keep the tears that are threatening to come from welling up in my eyes, I look away again, occupying myself with dabbing at his cut with an alcohol pad followed by some antibiotic ointment.

“Alright, fine. I did feel like it was stupid,” I confess, “because I was scared. Scared that we would just end up hurting each other again. So in that sense, yes, I did think it was stupid. But not in a ‘meaningless’ sort of stupid; rather, a ‘bad decision’ kind of stupid.”

Karl tenses a bit as I dab at his cut. “I figured Chloe had you convinced that it meant nothing,” he admits quietly, his voice hardly more than a whisper. “Figured she was trying to get between us again, and that maybe, this time, it would actually work.”

I pause, taking a deep breath as I try to steady myself. “That’s another thing,” I say. “How dare you accuse Chloe of ‘trying to get between us’. First of all, I’m an adult who can make my own decisions. And second, Chloe is one of my closest friends. Her opinion matters to me, and I won’t have it diminished to petty drama.”

Once I’m finished, a slight red tinge takes over Karl’s face. He looks away, his eyes fixed on a distant point that doesn’t exist.

“Besides,” I continue, “Chloe actually made me see that you make me ridiculously happy. She was the one who pointed out how much you’ve changed for me. So yes, at first, I thought it would be best if we ended the physical aspect of our relationship. But now, I’m not sure if I want to do that.”

Karl’s expression softens, but there’s still a hint of skepticism in his eyes. “Really?” he asks, his voice barely above a whisper.

“Yes, really,” I affirm. “I was planning on talking to you in the morning about my fears and worries about the whole situation. But you jumping to conclusions and drowning your feelings in a bottle of whiskey isn’t helping at all.”

Karl looks down at his now-bandaged hand, his expression slowly turning into one of remorse. “I’m… I’m sorry,” he murmurs. “I just... when I heard you were ending things, it felt like my world was collapsing all over again.”

I finish dressing his wound and start cleaning up the broken glass. Karl, having sobered up a bit from our conversation, helps me. Our hands brush occasionally, sending a jolt through me each time even though I don’t want to admit it.

At one point, as our hands brush, his fingers wrap around mine and hold me there. I slowly lift my gaze to meet his, and there’s a whole world of emotion in his brown eyes. “Look, I’m head over heels for you, Abby,” he whispers. “I couldn’t bear the thought of losing you again, and… it broke my heart, alright?”

I pull away slightly, the pain of our past resurfacing. “Then you know how I felt when you divorced me,” I say, my voice steady despite the fact that I’m physically holding back tears. “And multiply that pain by a hundred while you’re at it.”

Karl falls silent, the weight of my words hanging heavily in the air between us. I continue cleaning up the broken shards of glass, the perfect representation of us, of our intertwined lives; shattered into a million pieces, cutting deep, and possibly unfixable.

And yet, there’s still a part of me that wants to save the pieces I can salvage and try to glue them back together. The vase might have cracks and holes, and it might leak, and it might not be able to hold flowers any longer, but it could still be beautiful and useful in other ways.

After a moment of tense silence, Karl finally speaks up, his voice hesitant. “So, um… Why did you want to talk to me tonight? It’s late,” he says.

I hesitate, the reason for my late-night visit having been momentarily forgotten in the wake of our emotional exchange. But then the image of the car reappears in my mind along with the mysterious driver, and I’m reminded of why I was looking for Karl so urgently earlier.

I let out a soft sigh and finally turn to face him, steeling myself against the wave of fear, worry, and confusion that threatens to overtake me.

“Karl, I think we’re being watched.”