Chapter 48
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
Maren
Why do moments this perfect have to be punctuated by bullshit?
That’s a real question.
Whenever I feel my life is sailing along toward bliss, a hurricane creeps up and wipes out my happiness.
I stare down at the screen of my phone while Keats heats up pasta he ordered in for his brother and Stevie last night.
He said it’s baked ravioli from Calvetti’s.
It smells incredible.
The lump in my gut isn’t from hunger. It’s from the message that just popped up on my screen.
I reread it.
Hey. I’m following up on Dudley. Were you able to reconnect him with Keats?
I tap my finger over the screen of my phone.
“Maren?” Keats calls my name from where he’s standing next to the microwave. “You look pissed. What’s wrong?”
Was it that noticeable in my expression?
I drop my gaze back to my phone to reread the first message this woman sent to me weeks ago when I found Dudley.
I met that dog when I stayed at his owner’s place. Keats Morgan is the man you’re looking for. He’s a fun trip. Enjoy the ride!
“It’s nothing,” I say.
Keats wipes his hands on a towel near the sink. “Tell me, Maren.”
I don’t want to ruin this perfect evening by bringing up one of his ex-lovers. “I said it’s nothing, Keats.”
He stalks toward me.
Even with a bare chest and boxers on, he’s commanding. I can tell that he’s not going to drop this, and I won’t lie to him.
“Is your roommate all right?”
“It’s nothing like that.” I shake my head.
“What’s it like?” he asks, ignoring the ring of the microwave signaling the food is warmed.
I struggle with how to tell him or whether I should. I could delete all of the messages and forget this ever happened.
But I don’t.
“I got a message,” I admit. “It was from one of the women who reached out to me after I found Dudley.”
He leans his forearms on the island. “One of the women?”
The question is waiting to be answered, so I do it. “One of twenty-three women.”
His gaze drops to the granite countertop. “Shit.”
I look past his shoulder to the microwave. “Let’s eat dinner.”
His head shoots up. “No. We’re going to talk about this.”
I nod, unsure if I’m supposed to start this conversation or not. My knowledge of his past lovers is limited to their names and the brief details provided on their Facebook profiles.
I only looked up a handful, and that was enough.
Pretty, successful, fun women responded to my posting.
Those same women have slept with the man I just got out of bed with.
“Do you want to see who responded?” I offer my phone to him.
Shaking his head, he raises his hand. “No.”
I’m surprised by that. “Why not?”
“Those women helped me when I needed it,” he says, keeping his gaze locked on mine. “None of them are a part of my life now. I was fucked after my fiancée cheated on me, so I screwed whoever wanted to screw me.”
I’m stunned. I stare at him.
“I came home from a trip early and walked into the bedroom to find her riding the cock of one of my clients.” He grimaces. “Talk about a fucked up mess.”
“I’m sorry,” I mutter.
“I’m not.”
I look for more from him. We’re so deep into this now that I want to know everything.
“Amber was wrong for me, Maren.” He rakes a hand through his already messy hair. “I didn’t realize how wrong until I met you.”
“Until you met me?”
He rounds the island to stand in front of me. “After Layna died, I asked Amber to marry me because I felt lost, and she was there. We’d been dating for a couple of months at the time.”
I nod.
“But, I realized pretty quickly that you can’t chase grief away by ignoring it. You have to sit with it. You need to feel it. I thought planning a wedding would ease the pain, but it didn’t.”
I stare into his eyes.
“Even though I didn’t love her the way I should have, I never cheated on her.” He pats the countertop. “I stayed true to her, and when I found out, she didn’t, I was tossed into a tailspin.”
He glances over his shoulder when the microwave beeps again.
“I used sex to deal with all of it.” He tilts his head back. “I didn’t fully work through Layna’s death, so random fucking buried the pain of that and the hit my ego took when Amber cheated.”
“And now?” I question. “How are you now?”
“Honestly?”
“Honestly,” I repeat.
“I’ve never been happier.”