32. Wentworth
THIRTY-TWO
Wentworth
2019
I START AT THE BEGINNING AND TELL CONNER everything. That Kait’s father owned the ranch I hid on after everything that went down with Brian Maxwell. The kind of man Tom Barrett was. What he had planned for her—a forced marriage to a man who was all too willing to mete out a lifetime of punishment for crimes she’d been blamed for but didn’t commit. That I fell in love with her and couldn’t leave her behind.
“Married?” He says it quietly, the frown that settles into his features tells me what he’s thinking about. That not too long ago, he and Kait were involved. It doesn’t matter to him that he didn’t know. Even though he’s slept with plenty of married women during his tenure as the Gilroy family whore, he'd never sleep with a woman who belonged to someone he considered family. “You and Kait were married.”
“Yeah—for about five weeks.” Giving him a brusque nod, I look away. “I know.” I tell him, reminding myself that he didn’t know about Kait. No one did. It’s not his fault that whatever weird twist of fate that brought her to Boston, also dropped her into his lap.
Con’s frown deepens into a scowl. “You know what?”
“That the two of you…” Fuck him for making me say it. Rubbing a rough hand over my mouth, I drop it on a sigh. “Kait said?—”
Still scowling, Con shakes his head. “Kaitlyn said what ?”
“That she approached you for sex at Gilroy’s and you turned her down.” I can’t keep the disbelief out of my tone because I know him. Know who he was before Henley came back into his life. Indiscriminate bathroom sex with strangers was his stock and trade. “She said you ran into each other a few months later, when she worked at Ryan’s hospital and she asked you out for coffee and you said yes. After that, the two of you went out a few more times but then Henley came home for good and that was the end of it. She said the two of you never so much as held hands.”
“And you don’t believe her.” It’s not a question but I answer him anyway.
“I’m saying it doesn’t matter,” I tell him, doing my best to keep my tone even. To keep calm. To keep myself from reaching across this table and separating his head from his shoulders. “Kait and I were over a long time ago. She’s free to?—”
Con starts to laugh, long and loud. So long and loud that more than a few people, scattered around the crowded restaurant, start shooting us nervous glances.
“Want to tell me what the fuck is so goddamned funny?” I snarl at him, my patience and altruism suddenly at an end.
“Yeah…” Leaning back in his seat, Conner swipes the tears off his face and keeps laughing. “You.” Dropping his hand, he braces it on the tabletop and takes a deep breath in an effort to get himself under control. “You’re fucking hilarious.”
“I just gave you a pass for fucking my ex-wife and you think that’s funny?” I need to get up. Leave. Get away from him before I do something that gets me 86ed from the diner and possibly arrested.
“No…” Shaking his head, Con reaches for his coffee cup and takes a drink. “I mean, that part is mildly amusing—mainly because it never fucking happened—but it’s not why I’m laughing.”
I make a rough, angry sound in the back of my throat. “Wanna tell me why you are laughing, then?”
“Sure…” Still chuckling, Conner picks up his fork and knife to tackle the steak and eggs Tina delivered a while ago. Stabbing his ribeye, he cuts off a piece before looking up at me. “I’m laughing because you said you and Kaitlyn are over.” Lifting his fork, Con jabs the hunk of meat dangling from its tines at me before shoving it into his mouth. “and that’s fuckin’ hilarious.”
Watching him chew, I feel my chest go tight and my scalp start to tingle. “Maybe you missed the part where I said she divorced me.”
“And maybe you missed the part where I said I saw the two of you together last night.” Finished chewing, Conner shakes his head. “I can read a helluva lot more than lips, man. Trust me when I tell you—the two of you aren’t over .”
“She tried to fuck my best friend,” I remind him, hands wrapped around the edge of the table in an effort to keep myself from ripping the knife out of his hand and using it on him. “That feels pretty fucking over to me.”
“Says the guy who actually fucked my best friend.” Letting the hypocrisy of my statement sink in for a bit, Conner cuts off another chunk of his ribeye and feeds it into his mouth. “Besides—Kait didn’t want to fuck me. She didn’t even want to be there. She approached me that night because her friends goaded her into it. If I’d taken her up on the offer—which I didn’t because Henley was already home and that meant there was no way in hell I was getting it up for anyone but her—she would’ve bolted out the door before I even got her to the bathroom.”
“And then a few months later she asked you out for coffee.” When I say it, I realize that’s the part that bothers me. That’s the part that twists me up and makes me want to kill him. If it’d just been an anonymous hook-up in some bar bathroom, I’d be able to move past it but it wasn’t. She asked him out. Wanted to spend time with him enough to ask and he wanted to spend time with her enough to say yes.
“I’d just ended things with Henley and I was trying like hell to move on,” Con tells me, his tone uncharacteristically serious. “I think she recognized that it was something we had in common and saw it as something we could do together.” Leaning into me, across the table, he looks me dead in the eye. “And we were. Neither of us were even close to ready but we were trying… and if Henley hadn’t finally come home for good, there’s a real possibility that we might’ve gotten there and this—” He toggles the knife in his hand between the two of us. “would be a very different conversation the two of us are having.”
“If you’re trying to make me feel better, you’re doing a shit job of it.” I shake my head, gaze narrowed down to a glare. “All you’re doing is making me want to bury that steak knife in your fucking neck.”
Conner gives me a grin before very intentionally setting the knife in question on his plate. Turning the handle in my direction, he shrugs. “And that’s why it’s not over between the two of you.”
Fuck.
The anger that was steadily building into a rage drains out of me in a fast whoosh , the sudden absence of it leaving me more than a little dizzy. “ She left me , remember?” Shoulders slumped against my seat, I shake my head. “As a matter of fucking fact, all she does is run the second I turn my back.”
“I know what that’s like...” Con laughs again, only this time, the sound of it is commiserating. Almost sad. “Henley gave me a run for my money. Pushed me away every chance she got. Couldn’t believe that I loved her because she didn’t even know what love was. What it looked like. What it felt like because her mother spent her whole life convincing her that no one ever would.”
Do you think he loves you? Is that what he told you? He doesn’t love you. He can’t love you. No one can.
That’s what her father said to her the day he came for her. That I didn’t love her. Could never because she wasn’t worthy. I never contradicted him. Never told her how I felt because I was afraid that saying the words out loud would somehow turn me into my father. Make me fickle and selfish. I never understood that by keeping my feelings from her, that’s exactly who I became.
No wonder she ran.
I’d have run from me too.
“Okay…” Swallowing hard, I nod. “So what do I do?”
“Decide if she’s worth the work,” Conner says with a faint smile that tells me he made his decision a long time ago and never regretted it. Not once. “Because it’s gonna be work, every goddamned day.” His faint smile turns into a wide, lopsided grin. “My dad always says that nothing good ever comes easy and nothing easy is ever worth having, so you gotta decide.”
“And if she is?” I’ve already made my decision. I made my decision six-years ago. From the first time I saw her waiting for me on those porch steps, I knew.
Conner tilts his head and gives me a shrug. “And then you spend the rest of your life making sure she knows it.”