6. Wentworth
SIX
Wentworth
AFTER TESS LEFT, I CLOSED UP SHOP FOR THE DAY. On any other Friday, I’d run home to take a quick shower before I headed across town to pick my nephew, Noah, up from school. Once I had him in tow, I’d spend a few hours with him, running around the city, before finally taking him home and handing him off to Silver, his mother and my sister. After that, I’d head to Gilroy’s and start my shift, spending the next eight hours checking IDs and breaking up bar fights before heading home to fall on my face.
But this isn’t a normal Friday because the F5 tornado that is Tesla Castinetti just rolled through here and fucked me all the way up with four little words.
…and Ryan’s nurse, Kait.
I still don’t completely understand how she got here. How Kait just… appeared right in front of me, after all the years between then and now. How, with a whole fucking continent to choose from, she ended up here . Just planted herself in my fucking backyard and refused to be uprooted.
She tried explaining it to me once, but I’ll confess I wasn’t really paying attention. I was too busy getting her naked to understand a goddamn thing she was telling me.
I do know that I asked her to leave Boston, and she told me no and that when I told her to leave, she laughed in my face.
I don’t want to. I finally have a life that I like and people in it who like me . I’m not willing to walk away from that.
Since leaving Boston wasn’t an option for me either, we agreed, even though our lives are hopelessly and inexplicably tangled, that it would be best for everyone if we steered clear of each other.
I’ll live my life and you’ll live yours and as far as everyone else is concerned, we’ve never met.
We compromised. She agreed to stay away from Gilroy’s, even on the days that I’m not working, and I agreed to stay away from the center, which is why, when I walk Grace home from work, I leave her at the rear entrance instead of walking her to her apartment door. She agreed to give me Benny’s because it’s where everyone goes for after shift pancakes and I told her she can have Gilroy Sunday dinners because family dinners have always been a foreign concept to me. Aside from the occasional pizza with Silver and Noah or my annual, obligatory dinners at Davino’s with my mother, I haven’t shared a dinner table with anyone in years.
Those are the rules and even though I’ve never been much for rule following, I stick to them because I know what will happen if I don’t.
I’ll slide right back into my obsession with Kaitlyn Barrett and that’s not something I can afford to do.
Slide back into your obsession with Kaitlyn Barrett? Take a look around you—Kaitlyn Barrett is one habit you’ve never been able to kick—not since the first moment you saw her and certainly not since the last.
Alone, standing in the middle of the lobby of my shop, I let myself do something I rarely give myself permission to do.
I look at her.
She’s everywhere.
No matter where I look, Kait’s in front of me. Standing at the corral behind Northpoint, talking to that damn horse of hers. Sitting on the dock, long, dark hair draped over her shoulder, a half-finished tattoo of a dragonfly on her shoulder. Standing on the front porch, waiting for Damien and me on the first day that we met. Sitting in the kitchen, surrounded by her mountain of notebooks, face hidden by the screen of her laptop.
Not just those. A dozen more.
Every memory I have of her.
Except the dirty ones.
Those I keep just for me.
But the rest…
The rest I framed and put on display so I can pretend that they don’t matter. That the subject of them is just some girl I used to know. No one special. No one who mattered. And then I had to fuck it all up by telling Ryan the truth.
She’s my wife .
Only she’s not.
Kait’s not my wife.
Not anymore.
No matter how many times I draw it for you, no matter how long I spend perfecting every detail, you’ll never see what I see. I could spend a thousand years drawing your face and I’d never even come close…
I never really understood how true those words where until she was gone. I didn’t stop drawing her face because I can’t remember what it looks like. I stopped drawing her face because I do. I remember everything. Every line. Every curve. Every angle and plane. I can’t close my eyes without seeing it. Can’t go to sleep at night without dreaming about it.
When Kait left, I thought that was it. That she was gone for good. That without me clouding her vision, she came to her senses and ran back to Barrett. Back to her father and the life that she hated. To marry a man who was more prison sentence than husband.
It took everything I had in me not to go after her. Chase her down. Make her look me in the eye and tell me why —why she’d choose a lifetime of punishment over what I had to offer. I wanted to—fuck, I wanted to but in the end, I let her go because I wasn’t what she really wanted after all and if I couldn’t accept that, then I was no better than the assholes she ran back to.
Like I said, I don’t entirely understand how she got here. How after six years, Kaitlyn Barrett just… appeared right in front of me. What I do understand is that the boundaries I’ve built and the rules that I’ve followed to keep her out aren’t going to be enough to save me.
Not anymore.
Not this time.
And if I’m going down, Kait’s going with me.