31. Kristin
31
KRISTIN
R ed . All I saw was red as tears streamed down my cheeks. How could I have been such a fool? How could I have been so stupid to trust him?
“Kristin!” Hannah Jane shouted my name as I ran across the employee parking lot to my car.
I didn’t know what I would have done if I didn’t have my own ride. The universe was apparently on my side. I would rather have walked the twenty miles back home than gotten in a car with William Solomon.
“Kris! Wait!” Isaac yelled, sprinting out of the building behind me.
I didn’t stop running. Never looked over my shoulder. Everyone could go fuck themselves. I beelined for my car and peeled out of the parking lot.
My phone vibrated inside the cupholder. Will’s name lit up the screen.
“Fuck you!” I shouted and threw it into the floorboard. I smacked the steering wheel again, desperate to pour my anger out on something. “Fuck you, Will Solomon! ”
Everything with Will had been so good. We were good. Better than good—we were perfect. But the moment Elena Callaway said his name, my world shattered.
He played me like a fool. And like the fool I was, I fell for it.
I fell hard and fast like a skydiver with no parachute, free falling. Oblivious until the moment I crashed.
Hannah Jane knew.
Isaac knew.
With the way gossip flew through this town, I was certain I was the only one out of the loop.
I let him near the kids. A fresh wave of tears hit when I realized that I was going to have to break their hearts. They loved Will as much as I did.
I careened into the gravel parking lot at Jokers. The place was packed, but I recognized all the cars. The rest of the poker club was hanging out tonight while Hannah Jane and I attended the staff party.
I grabbed the hem of my gown and stormed inside. The screen door nearly flew off the hinges as it bounced against the wall.
Bridget was working behind the bar, while Maddie, Luca, Steve, and Erica sat eating dinner. Chase and Layla were in the corner shooting pool, and Mel had just walked out of the bathroom.
Every eye in the place turned to me, and for good reason. I had to be a sight to behold, wearing a red evening gown in a place like Jokers. I pushed away the heartbreak and let the anger burn hot and violent.
It felt good.
“Who knew?” I shouted. My voice was shaking, but I didn’t care. My entire adult life had been spent keeping a lid on my temper when the chips were down. I never lost my cool.
Well, hold my beer. I was about to lose it .
Luca wiped his hands on his jeans, exchanging a worried glance with Maddie. “Kris?—”
“It’s a yes or no question,” I snapped.
Bridget’s eyes widened. “Holy shit,” she whispered. “I’ve never heard her speak like that to anyone. Like, ever .”
“Isaac and I have known Will for a long time,” Luca said gently, as if he were dealing with a wild animal. It wasn’t a bad idea considering I was about to rip his damn head off.
I glared at Maddie. “And since Hannah Jane knew, I’m guessing you did, too.”
“Will was going to tell you. He promised,” she reasoned.
That was all fine and dandy, but they didn’t deserve reasonable .
The bottom line was that he didn’t tell me, and he had every opportunity to.
They all did. Especially when I made it clear that I was worried about losing my job.
The raises. It dawned on me that Will had probably orchestrated the bump in my pay. As if this nightmare couldn’t get any more humiliating, he practically paid me to be with him.
He had never been just a guest…
I scoffed. “Well, that’s just super. I’m so glad all y’all had the details worked out with him. How goddamn nice for you.”
“What’s going on here?” Chase asked in his stern cop voice as he and Layla approached the bar. He glanced between me and the rest of the club.
Bridget caught his eye. Her pursed lips told him the whole story.
Chase raised his eyebrows. “Oh, shit…”
“You all knew,” I hissed. It was barely more than a whisper as I choked on my tears. “You all knew, and you let me humiliate myself.”
“Kris, why don’t you sit down,” Mel said quietly. “Take a minute and breathe before you say something you’ll regret. ”
“Regret?” I cackled hysterically at the ceiling. “Because right now the only thing I regret is ever trusting y’all.” I wiped my fingers along my mascara-streaked cheeks and shook my head. “I’m done. I am so fucking done.”
My dress swished behind me as I spun and stormed out the door, I heard Steve’s boots stomping on the hardwood. Someone—it sounded like Chase—asked where he was going.
“I’m going after Kris so she doesn’t kill Will,” he said.
I jumped back in my car and floored it home. I wasn’t going to kill Will. That would involve seeing him again, which I had absolutely no intention of doing.
My phone lit up again as I crossed the bridge from Beaufort into Morehead City. Missed call alerts and unread text messages filled the screen, but I didn’t bother checking them. Will could fuck right off. He lost his right to a response when he lied.
Call it what you wanted, but omission was the same as lying. Especially when the information was pertinent to the woman he was fucking.
All those wasted I love yous... Was I just a joke to him? The poor little maid falls for the billionaire. What a fucking cliché.
Headlights followed me into the mobile home park. So help me, if Will shows up at the house…
Steve’s Challenger pulled behind me and parked. Before I could even get the key out of the ignition, Steve opened my car door and caged me in.
“You don’t have to be here, I’m fine,” I said.
“That’s a fuckin’ lie,” he clipped, as if it were just another casual evening.
“Steve, I’m not in the mood.”
“I know. I’m pretty sure back at the bar is the loudest I’ve ever heard you talk. You’re more even-keeled than Erica.”
Logan opened the screen door and popped his head out. “Will! You gotta come in and see—” His voice trailed off when he realized it was Steve.
I looked down, trying to hide my tear-stained face.
“Oh, uh,” Logan said, brows furrowed. “Hey, Steve.”
Steve nodded. “You mind givin’ me and Kris a minute?”
Logan’s shoulders fell as he turned and walked inside. “Yes, sir.”
I waited until the door shut to say, “If I’m being honest, I really don’t feel like talking to you right now.”
My phone vibrated again with Will’s umpteenth call.
I was home. Since I didn’t have to worry about missing a call from the kids if they were having an emergency, I turned the dang thing off.
“Yeah, you made that pretty clear,” he said as he rounded the car. Steve opened the passenger door. “But it’s fuckin’ cold, so do you mind cranking this thing up so I can talk at you without freezing my balls off?”
I raised an eyebrow. “You’re gonna talk at me?”
“Well, I figured you’re not gonna talk to me. Knowing how stubborn you are, you’re probably gonna pretend like you’re not listening. So yeah. I’m gonna talk at you and if you hear something you wanna talk at me about, I’m all ears.”
Begrudgingly, I cranked the car up and blasted the heat.
Red dresses weren’t made for cold December nights. They weren’t made for heartbreak. They were meant for happily ever after and riding off into the sunset.
That was, unless Prince Charming turned out to be a fraud.
“What happened tonight, Kris?” Steve asked as he adjusted his massive frame inside the tiny coupe.
“Like you don’t already know.”
“I’ve got a hunch, but apparently I don’t know as much as everyone else. Why don’t you fill me in?”
So, I did. I told him everything from meeting Will while he was staying at the inn to Elena outing him tonight. Part of me—a very small part—felt bad for Will. I knew he was a private guy, so being put in the spotlight had to suck.
I also believed that he probably did intend to tell me.
Unfortunately for him, thoughts rarely counted.
When I was finished, I turned to Steve. “So, you’re really gonna pretend like you didn’t know he was the one who bought the inn? You know everything that’s happening in that town. Hell, no one sneezes without you being told about it.”
He shrugged. “Like I said, I had a hunch. I ran a background check, and nothing came up.”
“That’s usually a good thing.”
“Even good people get traffic tickets. They have some sort of digital footprint. When I ran his information, it was almost like he didn’t exist. But you were happy, so I kept my eyes open. The first poker night he showed up to, Isaac hauled him outside and chewed him out about something. It was pretty quick after the news broke that the inn sold, so I figured the two had to be connected.”
I tried to sniff back the tears, but it didn’t help. They ran down my face as they pleased.
Steve draped his heavy arm across my shoulders and pulled me into his side. “What are you most upset about?”
I cocked my head, resting it on his arm. “Everything. I’m mad that he lied to me when he could have just given me the reassurance that I needed that I wouldn’t lose my job. I’m mad that he only shared a part of his life when I aired all my dirty laundry for him to see. I’m mad that I fell for him in the first place. I’m pissed that I put the kids through this.”
A fresh wave of hot tears built behind my closed eyelids. “I’m so fucking angry that I thought there could actually be good things for us in the future. That after all the hell we’ve been through, everything was going to be okay. ”
Steve’s phone rang with an incoming call from Maddie.
I glared at him until he shoved it back in his pocket.
“And I’m mad at people who I thought were my friends,” I continued. “People that I trusted. They lied to me, too. They’re complicit in all of this.”
Kylie peered at us through the curtains.
“Great,” I said, lowering my face. “What the hell am I supposed to tell them, Steve? They loved him as much as I did.”
Steve cleared his throat and stroked his beard. “You’re gonna tell them that everything’s gonna be okay. Because it is.”
“You can’t know that for sure.”
He raised a thick eyebrow. “Yeah, I do. Don’t test me, kid.” He went back to running his palm over his beard. “Have you ever looked at the back of a rug?”
I shrugged. “Yeah?”
“Pretty damn ugly, isn’t it?”
“Will you stop being cryptic as hell and get to the point?”
“You know, sometimes we don’t see how good something is going to be in the end because we’re caught up in all the shit around it. A weaver doesn’t stop weaving because the back of a rug looks like a mess. He knows there’s something beautiful happening on the other side. It’s just not time yet.”
I hated when Steve got old and wise on me. He was always right, but I was always stubborn. “What are you telling me to do, Steve?”
He looked at me, face stern. “There is nothing remotely admirable about letting something good walk away just because you want to win an argument.”
I glared at Steve. “So, you’re saying I should let him get away with lying to me? That I should let people walk all over me?”
“Nah, that’s not it at all. I think you and him need to have yourselves a good fight. Yell and scream at each other and get all your shit out in the open. He owes you an explanation, and you owe him the time it takes for him to give it to you. If you want to walk away after that, it’s up to you.”
“I don’t owe him a damn thing.” I cut my eyes at Steve. “He lied to me.”
“And let me guess, you didn’t tell him about the kids right away either. You probably waited a while to tell him about your parents.”
“Because I was protecting them,” I shot back. “And if you can’t see that, then you can leave right now. I’m not gonna be judged for how I’ve had to handle situations that y’all have never had to deal with.”
“No one’s arguing that you got dealt a shitty hand, Kris.”
For the first time in a long time, I saw pain in his eyes. It had lessened since he fell in love with Erica, but it was back in full force tonight.
“I remember the night I called you,” Steve continued, voice strained. “Chase was busy putting your mom and dad in the back of separate cars. Kylie was rocking Zoey, and Hunter was hiding behind her. Logan was the only one who could remember your phone number. He was too shell-shocked to talk, though. So, I sat down with him on the front porch of your parents’ house and told him if he’d dial, I’d talk to you and explain what was going on. You wanna know something? It took you three hours to drive back here from college, and not once did they doubt that you were coming for them and that everything was going to be okay.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat. “You never told me that…”
“Kristin, listen to me. The kids are strong. They’re resilient. If this really is the end for you and Solomon, they’ll be alright. They can handle it. You raised them well.”
His phone rang again, but this time it was Will’s name on the screen. He must’ve been shaking the trees to see who was with me. Steve offered me his phone. “You wanna talk to him?”
I shook my head. “No. ”
For the first time since I’d met Steve, he looked at me with disappointment in his eyes. “Would you rather be right or be happy?” he asked.
“Just because I have a kind face doesn’t mean I’m about to let it be steamrolled.” I steeled my spine and lifted my chin. “I would rather not be with someone who lies to me.” Cutting my eyes at him, I yanked the keys out of the ignition. “Including so-called friends.”