Chapter 3
Beau
I can’t look away from the woman who has occupied my thoughts for years. And it makes me face something I’ve been reluctant to recognize.
I don’t love the woman I call my wife, and I think I was trying to place a subconscious familiarity because she’s the sister of the woman I truly want.
Kendall was easily available, and I was ready to settle. It’s a sad truth, and it makes me a bastard. I would have never gone through with the wedding if I had known about Kayla, and now…my son.
I rub a hand down my face, looking at the photos I’ve forwarded to my phone. I have a son, and I desperately want to meet him. Kayla doesn’t realize it yet, but I’m going to fully integrate myself into their lives. I want to know him, and I want to know…her.
After our time in Costa Rica, I’d become obsessed with finding her, but failed.
“I tried finding you, too,” I tell her, moving into the living room from where I’ve been standing in the doorframe between rooms.
She looks up at me, a flush growing on her cheeks again. “We really took the whole vacation fling to an extreme.”
I let out a chuckle, sitting on the couch across from the tree. “Yeah, and it doesn’t help that I don’t really do the whole social media thing.”
Kayla grimaces. “Me either. Well, not anymore. I found out I was pregnant and deleted everything after a few comments.”
I frown, an angry protectiveness rising within me. “What comments?”
She raises an eyebrow. “You may not know this, but single mothers are not looked upon all that kindly in small towns. Particularly small towns where their faith is their whole life.”
I hum under my breath; I wouldn’t know all that much. My family has always lived in a large city where we were hard pressed to know anyone’s name, even our neighbors. Instead, I move on to what I really want to know.
“How come you and Kendall aren’t close? She never brought you up, only in passing that her sister was going to be at the cabin as well,” I ask, mostly out of frustration that all of this could have been avoided before vows were exchanged.
Kayla tenses and then slowly sets down an ornament she was about to hang. She wipes her hand on her jeans and then moves to sit across from me on the couch with a sigh. “It’s a long story. You sure you want to know?”
My arm stretches out to rest on the back of the couch. “Of course.”
“You’d have to ask Kendall for her side, but if I had to guess… She’s always viewed me as competition.”
I frown. “Competition?”
Kayla slumps against the cushions. “When we were younger, everything just came easier to me...school and sports. Hell, I had a bare minimum skincare routine, and never any acne.”
Her nose wrinkles, then she looks up at me with earnest anguish in her eyes. “Kendall did not. My parents had to hire tutors to help her pass, she hurt herself in every sport she tried, and puberty was not kind.”
My eyebrows furrow. “That’s not your fault.”
Kayla shakes her head. “It’s not, but our father didn’t help reinforce that.
He’d continuously make comments about how I was an easy child, and Kendall wasn’t.
I overheard him ask her one time why she couldn’t be more like me.
When I brought it up to our mother, she asked Kendall, who lied and said our father never said that. ”
Her fingers twist together on her lap. “At the time, I didn’t understand why she lied, that she was only protecting herself from pissing off our dad even more, but I was a kid too.
I was mad, angry at her for lying, so I pulled away.
I started to rub my achievements in her face until she left for college, and by then our relationship was beyond repair.
When I graduated high school, I had reached out about possibly attending the same college as her.
She begged me not to and said she was finally out of my shadow and had her own life that she wanted to keep me separate from. ”
Kayla shrugs her shoulders. “I respected that, and so we lived our lives. After she got her degree, she moved to the city full time and really only came up to the cabin for Christmas.”
She wipes a lone tear from the corner of her eye, and I scoot closer, sliding my arm over her shoulder.
“Hey, don’t cry. It sounds like she wasn't really determined to fix the relationship either. It’s not your fault,” I say.
Kayla sighs, resting her head gently on my shoulder. “Yeah, I guess. I had hoped when our father died that maybe it would bring her some peace, but instead she didn’t want to come to the cabin that year. It’s why I was in Costa Rica. My mother had flown to her brother’s in another state.”
My thumb rubs circles onto her arm. “And somehow we found each other in Costa Rica, so I guess we have Kendall to thank for bringing us together both times.”
She frowns, turning her head to look up at me. “Both times?”
My eyes dip to her lips and back up to her confused stare. “When we made our son, and then tonight. If I hadn't married her and came here, we might not have met again. And that would be a damn shame.”
“You’re—I don’t—Beau—”
I know she’s trying to say we can’t be together, so I lean down and kiss her hard. She gasps into my mouth and my hand slides to her neck, holding her in place as I try to deepen our kiss.
A loud beeping startles us both, and she jumps up from the couch, running to the kitchen. My head drops back onto the cushion, debating whether to chase her or let it be for now.