41. Wentworth
FORTY-ONE
Wentworth
TWELVE HOURS AGO, I THOUGHT KAIT WAS GONE. THAT I’d never see her again. That she’d chosen a life far away from me, filled with people who didn’t love her because even if it was a future she didn’t want, it was a future she understood. A future she could be certain of.
But that’s not why she left me.
Kait didn’t run back to Barrett. Back to a lifetime of being less. Being Brock’s wife and her father’s whipping post.
She didn’t run back.
She ran headlong into the unknown.
She ran away.
From me.
Somehow, knowing that hurts more.
Makes me even angrier.
It’s late afternoon and she’s been asleep for a while, curled up on the mattress behind me while I stare at the piece of blank art paper on the desk in front of me. For once, my head isn’t full of her. There aren’t a million memories of us together, screaming to get out. I don’t feel this crazy impulsive need to draw them all before I forget. Before she slips away completely because she’s here. She’s with me and if I want to remember the way she made me feel, all I have to do is turn around and look at her.
It’d be smarter if I just let her fade away. If I let myself forget. Maybe if I let myself forget the way she made me feel, I’d be able to move on. Let go.
But I doubt it.
Flipping my sketch pad closed on a sigh, I swivel my chair toward the mattress behind me to find her awake and looking up at me with an expression that tells me she doesn’t know what’s supposed to happen next, any more than I do.
“What time is it?” she asks quietly, lower lip caught between her teeth. A habit of hers that I remember well. She does it when she’s nervous. Unsure of the situation she’s in. She used to do it a lot when we were together.
“After five,” I tell her, my tone flat to hide my reluctance because I don’t want to tell her what time it is. Because she’s going to leave and I’m not sure if I’m going to be able to stop myself from dragging her into my bedroom and tying her to the bed. “Are you hungry?” It’s a stupid thing to ask. I’ve been fucking her almost nonstop for the last six hours. She’s probably starved to death and sore beyond belief.
“No,” she lies to me, shaking her head against the pillow before she struggles to sit up with a barely concealed wince. “I should probably?—”
“You’re not leaving.” I say it in that same flat, careful tone but I can hear it, even if she can’t. The desperate certainty that if I let her leave, Kait will disappear again. This time for good. “Not yet.” Pushing myself out of my chair, I cross the room to the kitchenette to open one of the upper cabinets. “Not until we’ve talked.”
“I thought you didn’t want to talk.” I can hear some of the old Kait— my Kait —in her tone and the sound of her makes my chest ache and tightens the clench of my jaw. “As a matter of fact, you made it perfectly clear last night that you don’t want to hear anything I have to say.”
“Well, I do now.” Finally finding what I’m looking for, I slam the cabinet closed before moving to the refrigerator without looking at her. “So you’re going to sit right fucking there, and not move an inch while?—”
“You can’t keep me here,” she says on a scoff, my Kait roaring back in full force. “I’m not your?—”
Slamming the fridge closed, I turn to look at her, pinning her to the mattress with a razor-sharp glare.
“You’re not my what ?” I say, my flat, careful tone fraying and tearing at its edges, showing the temper underneath. “You’re not my fucking what ?”
“Property.” Staring up at me, wide-eyed, Kait shakes her head. “I’m not your property.”
We both know what I thought she was going to say.
Wife.
I’m not your wife anymore.
Ignoring the stab of it, I give her a head nod on my way back to where she’s staring up at me. Hunkering down in front of her I hold out the bottle of water I pulled from the fridge. When all she does is glare back at me, I cock my head slightly. “Take the water, Kait.”
When I say her name, her jaw clenches like I slapped her but before I can say it for a second time or possibly threaten to hold her down and make her drink it if she doesn’t stop acting like a stubborn child and take the fucking bottle, she snatches it out of my hand on a temperamental huff. When she cracks the bottle open, I toss the pair of ibuprofens in my hand into her lap. “All of it,” I say, jerking my chin at the water bottle before I stand.
Back to her, I make my way to the kitchenette again. “I know you’re not my property. You’ve never been my property,” I tell her while I open the freezer. “But you were my wife—and then you just fucking disappeared on me. No explanation. No goodbye. Just gone .” Slamming the freezer door closed, I cross the room to where she’s still sitting in my bed, rumpled sheets pooled around her and clutched to her chest like a shield. Hunkering down for a second time, I show her the ice pack and she blushes, the pink flush of it going straight to my cock. “So, I think I’m entitled to some answers, don’t you?”
Brow furrowed, she shakes her head. “Went?—”
“That’s a yes or no question,” I tell her, my tone making my expectations clear—I ask. She answers.
Her jawline clenches again before she gives me a brief, single head nod. “Yes.”
“Good.” Giving her a bland smile, I push the hand holding the icepack under the sheets and into the warm juncture of her thighs. As soon as my hand makes contact with her bare pussy, Kait sucks in a breath and her gaze drops to my mouth. “Since we both know you’re not walking out of here in your current condition, why don’t you give them to me while you wait for the meds and the ice to do their job.”
“Okay. Fine.” This time the nod she gives me is fast and tight. “What do you want to know?”
What do I want to know?
I want to know what happened.
Why you left.
If it was something I did.
If it was because you didn’t love me.
Instead of asking, I pull my hand from between her legs, leaving the ice pack behind. Standing, I take the few steps to my desk chair and dump myself into it. “Where’d you go?”
Looking down at her empty water bottle, Kait focuses her attention on screwing the lid back on. “Wyoming.”
So I was right. She didn’t go back to Barrett. Why does knowing that make it worse? “How’d you get there?”
Bottle capped, she looks at me and sighs. “You won’t like my answer.”
“ How’d you get there ?” I repeat the question, making it clear I expect an answer.
“I hitchhiked.” She says it in a matter-of-fact tone and she’s right. I don’t like it. Just thinking about her getting into cars with random strangers because the danger of it was preferable to staying with me is almost too much. Like she can see it on my face, Kait tries to explain herself. “I didn’t have much money and I didn’t want to waste it on?—”
“A safe mode of transportation?” Glaring down at her, I shake my head. “What was in Wyoming?”
Bottom lip caught between her teeth, she considers her answer before she gives it to me. “Ranches I could work on.”
I laugh when she says it, the sound of it devoid of humor. “You left me to go work on a ranch in Wyoming.”
“No.” Her head jerks back on her neck like I took a swing at her. “I left?—”
“What are you doing here?” I cut her off because it’s the one answer I want more than anything and the one answer I’m the most terrified to hear. “In Boston.”
“I could ask you the same thing,” she snipes back. “What are you doing here?”
“I live here,” I growl at her, pushing the words past the rusty hinge of my jaw.
She gives me that slapped in the face look again. “You live in California.” She says it slowly and carefully like I must’ve forgotten.
“No.” Leaning forward in my seat, I shake my head, forearms braced on my knees. “I went to college in California. “I live here . I’ve always lived here.”
When I say it, her mouth falls open and her forehead crumples like she can’t understand what I’m telling her. “I thought…” Shaking her head, she looks around like she’s trying to map out an escape route. “You never?—”
That’s when it dawns on me.
If she’d known I lived in Boston, it would’ve been the last city she moved to and fuck me if knowing that doesn’t sting like a motherfucker.
“Why did you move here?” I ask, cutting her off again in hopes of pulling her out of her panic spiral.
“I—” Still shaking her head, she looks back at me. “Nursing school. I was accepted into the nursing program at Boston College and they had the shortest waitlist. I worked as a groom on a ranch outside of Chyenne and saved my money until it was time to move here.”
I make a rough, ugly sound in the back of my throat. “Is that when you met Conner?”
Her eyes go wide again when I say his name, shame staining her cheeks and it takes everything I have to keep myself in my chair. To not leave the hotel and go find him so I can drag him into the street and beat the absolute piss out of him. “I met Conner my last semester of school,” she tells me with a nod. “Some classmates and I went out and we ended up at Gilroy’s. That’s when I met him.”
“And then the two of you started seeing each other .” It’s not a question but she answers me anyway.
“No,” she tells me, shaking her head on another frown. “It was never like that. Conner and I never?—”
“So it was just about fucking then?” I’m being an asshole, I know I am but I can’t to make myself stop.
“ No .” She practically shouts it at me, her cheeks stained with temper. “Conner and I never slept together. We were friends. Just friends.” When I make that ugly sound in the back of my throat again, her blue eyes narrow down to a glare. “What about you and Tess?”
Something cold and sticky rolls through my stomach. Something that feels a hell of a lot like guilt. Putting it in a chokehold and shoving it down before it can show on my face, I give her a shrug. “What about us?”
Swallowing hard, she looks away from me for a moment before looking back. “Did you fuck her?”
“Yeah…” Pushing a nasty smirk on my face, I nod my head. “I did.” Because you left me. Instead of saying it out loud, I lean back in my chair and swipe a hand across my jaw like I’m trying to scrub the taste of the words out of my mouth. The guilt that goes along with them. “I want you to leave.” Dropping my hand, I look at her. “Boston—for good. I’ll pay for it. Give you enough money to start over somewhere—anywhere but here. I’m sure Ryan will be more than willing to give you a good?—”
“No.” Now it’s her turn to slap at me, the word coming out hot and fast.
“Excuse me?” Jesus Christ, what does it say about me that it’s taking every shred of self-control I can scrape together to stop myself from tackling her into the bed so I can fuck that temper right out of her.
“I said no .” She shakes her head at me, jaw set at a mutinous angle. “For the first time since I lost my brother, I have people,” she tells me, her tone level and absolute. “People who care about me. I’m not going anywhere.”
That’s not true.
You had me.
You just didn’t want me.
“Well, neither am I.” I lift my hands in a shrug before letting them fall to slap against my thighs. “So, how’s this supposed to work, then?”
“I guess we do what other divorced couples do,” she says with a faint, bitter smile. “We divide assets.”
So that’s what we did—only, instead of 401Ks and vacation homes, we divided an entire city and our friends who live in it.