Chapter 18 President of the Board #2
“And I just…” I shrugged and threw my hands out to my sides to unleash added annoyance.
“I just got done with it, Hutch. I did a lot of research about where to go and what to do. I hocked his ring. Sold everything I owned. I’d received an inheritance I didn’t want from some person in my past, more history, long story, but I didn’t really want to touch that money, though I did”—I took in a huge breath—“and I came to Misted Pines.”
“You’re acting like this is some kind of dire confession when nothing you’re saying seems out of hand after you found out what your jackass fiancé was up to,” he remarked.
“I changed my name,” I said quickly, thinking he’d think that was weird and extreme, or even unhinged.
“There are more reasons than just this, but we can say, Bryce took his wife finding out he was cheating as some kind of boon. Like he was on a game show and could now officially pick door number one or door number two. I was door number two, and when he was, as it was in Bryce’s mind, given the choice, he picked me. ”
“But you didn’t pick him,” he said.
I shook my head vehemently. “God no. Of course not. The man was living a double life, for heaven’s sake.
Gave me this whole song and dance about how he traveled for work, when he was at home a few miles away with his wife and kids.
And just to say, was also making one of those kids with his wife when he was also with me.
He texted all the time ‘when he was away.’ Called all the time when he was ‘on the road.’ I honestly don’t know how he did it.
Truthfully, how she didn’t catch him is a mystery.
Then again, in the end, whatever he was doing, he wasn’t being as stealthy as he thought, because she did catch him. ”
“Why are we talking about this now?”
“Well…look,” I said, pulled up the video on TikTok, turned it, tapped it and gave my phone to him.
He watched it, and when he was done, swiped the program closed, muttering, “How the fuck did that get so many hearts?”
“Likes,” I said automatically. “And, um…I don’t know. Maybe because you’re gorgeous.”
“And maybe it’s because you’re gorgeous,” he shot back.
I didn’t need him being sweet right now.
Though, with time to consider, if the owner of the MP Community TikTok went around filming some of the men who lived here in action, I was now seeing why tourism stayed so strong year long.
I pushed that thought aside and pointed out, “Hutch, it wasn’t me sinking twenty shots in a row.”
“I shouldn’t have asked the question,” he said tersely.
“Let’s get back on target. I can see you don’t want to be on social media, babe.
But it’s gonna be a thing for as long as those people have the attention span to give it, and since they exist to ping-pong from one thing to be pissed off about to another, you can just chill. It’ll blow over.”
“Bryce doesn’t know where I live.”
“Not surprised. It’s not his to know anymore.”
“Bryce is my Bree, Hutch. I just didn’t bother with the restraining order. I took off.”
Oh dear.
I could see immediately I shouldn’t have told him that.
“He’s stalking you?” he asked ominously.
I shook my head. “No. Not really. Just…not taking no for an answer. Not accepting I broke up with him. I blocked him on my phone, he went to my DMs. I went private, he started sending me flowers and gifts. He’d show at my house, though I wouldn’t open the door to him.
He’d come to my work to”—I did air quotation marks—“‘take me to lunch,’ and I’d never know if he’d go away calmly or we’d have a thing.
Though, more often than not, we had a thing. ”
He extended his long arm to me and snapped. “Phone. And engage it.”
“What? Why?”
He dropped his arm. “You still got him programmed in?”
Yes, I did, in case things escalated and I needed evidence to present to authorities, so I didn’t delete anything, not even his contact. And I did this before I knew what Hutch told me about blocking a number and those comms would still be there.
I didn’t say that.
I just said, “Yes.”
“Right. Why I want your phone is because that was on the Misted Pines page. So that means he knows where you are. Which means he might be gearing up to do something that will bug you and piss me off. So I’m gonna call him and tell him to keep his ass home, because if he hauls it up here, it’ll be in a jail cell because we got a lot less patience in our hick town for men who don’t take no for an answer than those fucks in the big cities do. ”
I wasn’t certain of his assertion (case in point, the cult next door).
However…
Part of me was curious to hear how he’d communicate that to Bryce.
Part of me wanted to hear him communicate that to Bryce.
All of me was wondering if this was a friends-with-benefits side benefit.
I’d never had such a friend.
Though, I sensed we were making it up as we went along.
“Babe,”—he did the arm extension, snapping thing again—“give me your phone.”
I hesitated.
“May, give me your fuckin’ phone,” he demanded.
I glared at him. “You’re being really bossy. What if I don’t want you to call him?”
He crossed his arms again. “Then I won’t call him. Though, when he gets here and I drill his teeth down his throat with my fist, you’ll be needing to dip into your inheritance to bail me out.”
Most of the time, I was super happy about his level of testosterone.
Right now, not so much.
He’s lost his shit at the idea you’re with someone else.
Me…
With someone else.
And Bryce was pissed.
Good God.
“You know”—I threw up my hands—“fuck it. Let him come. I don’t want you to punch him, but, seriously, Hutch.
What the fuck? I mean, why do I have to put up with this guy who imploded a woman’s life?
A woman he vowed to love and cherish for the rest of his days.
A woman he made babies with. And that’s just her.
He did the same to me with his bullshit.
Dating me. Falling in love with me. Making me fall in love with him.
Talking about moving in together. Giving me a stupid ring.
On bended knee, Hutch. Bended…freaking…knee. ”
I stalked to the kitchen to put away the groceries, still ranting.
“And then his double life gets discovered, two women a mess and sobbing in a fancy restaurant, and he thinks, ‘Oh, I’ll just pick one. And I want the shiny new model who didn’t pop out my babies…yet.’ Like I’m going to take him? Like he thinks I’m so dumb I won’t know he’ll do it again?”
I was slamming stuff around on the island so bad, Moxie raced up the spiral steps.
“Well, if he comes here and you get pissed at him and punch him in the face, then fine. Actually,”—I slammed down a package of meat—“good. Just do it if he shows up here at the cabin and not in a public place. I don’t know if Washington has stand-your-ground laws.
But I have plenty of evidence he’s been harassing me.
I’ll post your bail. But eventually, it’ll be all good. ”
My hand stopped right before I smushed a bag of whole grain rolls on the island because Hutch had wrapped his fingers around my wrist.
I looked up at him.
“You still have feelings for him?” he asked softly.
“Are you insane?” I asked loudly, and Tonks yodeled her support. “First, all this went down over a year and a half ago, so seriously, the dude needs to move on. Second, you can’t have feelings for a mirage, Hutch. He never existed. I can’t mourn something that never was.”
“You can, baby,” he said gently.
“Well, I don’t,” I assured. “Trust me. Was I stunned when it happened? Yes. Was I shaken? Yes. Was I hurt and heartbroken? Yes, and yes. Did I question everything about everything that happened between us to try to figure out how I didn’t figure it out? Yes again.”
I drew in a big breath and kept at it.
“Did I eventually realize he wasn’t worth my emotion, my energy?
Another yes. I didn’t leave Orlando to escape my feelings for him.
I didn’t even leave Orlando to escape him.
I left Orlando because I was done with Orlando.
And he was just the finger that pulled the trigger for me to make big decisions I’d been avoiding because I was unhappy, and I didn’t know how to make myself happy.
And you can read from that, somewhere deep down, I knew Bryce wasn’t going to make me happy, and maybe I was foolishly leaning on him, using my feelings for him hoping he would, because that’s how I read it. ”
Another big breath and I kept going.
“The cult next door notwithstanding, in Misted Pines, I’m happy. As crazy as this sounds, since I know everything that’s happened here over the last few years, I feel like, all my life, this was where I was supposed to be.”
I looked around to make my point and finished it.
“Well, finally, I’m here. And Bryce has been enough of a headache in my life. He can spend the time and money to come here and make a fool of himself. That’s no skin off my nose.”
He let my wrist go and pointed out, “The way you looked when I walked in, this big rant, May…”
He said no more.
But I heard him.
“I’m just annoyed because the store is going good. We have fun plans tomorrow. I’m getting it on the regular, and that it is freaking fantastic.”
His lips hitched up at one side.
“Don’t be smirky,” I ordered. “You know you’re hot in bed. You don’t need me to tell you or to get smirky about it.”
He didn’t stop being smirky.
Whatever.
“What I’m getting at is, I’m pissed because, if you don’t count the cult next door, I’m finally happy. And I’m just so over his shit and I don’t want to deal with him,” I concluded.
“And you don’t think me calling him will affect his decision-making process of whether or not to come?” he asked.
“Honey, the man asked me to marry him when he was already married. How he thought he was going to pull that off, I have no earthly clue. But I think it’s established Bryce Katz is gonna do what Bryce Katz is gonna do, and it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks about it, even if he’ll swear up and down you’re his whole world and all he’s doing is for you. ”
“How would you feel if I told you, it’d make me feel better to phone him?”
Instantly, I picked up my phone, engaged it, went to Bryce’s contact and handed the phone to Hutch.
For a very long beat, he didn’t take the phone. He didn’t even look at it.
He stared at me.
Then he took the phone.
“My name used to be Callie,” I told him.
Or, at least, one of them was.
He didn’t even twitch when I said that.
He just hit my phone screen, so I set about putting groceries away.
But I didn’t hide I was listening to every word Hutch said when he started saying them.
It started with, “No, this isn’t Callie. This is Callie’s new man.”
Callie’s new man.
Lord, Hutch had a way of making a girl shiver.
Then it went on with, “Listen, motherfucker, I don’t give a shit about anything you have to say. I’m calling because word got to my woman you’ve got your panties in a twist that the woman who scraped you off a year and a half ago has moved on. Take a fuckin’ hint, man, move on too.”
The “panties in a twist” was class.
Bryce was sure to hate that.
After that came, “You do you. And she’ll slap a restraining order on you.
I know you’re scrambling hard to convince yourself you aren’t a lowdown, filthy piece of shit for what you did to your wife.
You can run from that and do it hard for a long time.
It doesn’t mean it isn’t gonna catch up with you.
It is, because it has. You fucked up your wife’s life.
You’ve fucked up your kids’ lives. Everything you touch turns to shit.
And you’re gonna have to live the rest of your life understanding that.
Except for Callie. She’s where she wants to be, with who she wants to be with, and you do not factor. ”
There was a short pause, and then there was, “Your call. Make a fool of yourself. Waste your money. You’re already a joke. We talk about you and laugh about your ass.”
That was a lie.
But it was a good one.
Hutch went on, “We can always use a new punchline.”
And with that, he hung up.
He looked at me.
“He’s coming, isn’t he?” I asked.
“No clue. I think he might have a mental defect or a learning disability. At the very least, and I’m not tellin’ you something you don’t know, the man struggles with the skill of simply listening.”
It was my turn to smirk. “I should have just given you the phone when you first asked, because that was all kinds of epic.”
He didn’t respond to that.
He said, “I gotta train Tonks. Then I gotta get back to my dogs so I can get back to you so we can spend the night fucking.”
“Is there a lot of walking on this sanctuary tour?”
“Yes.”
“Are you going to go easy on me tonight so I don’t pass out halfway through the tour and lose my cool auntie vibe in front of the kids?”
“No.”
Of course that’d be his answer.
“Do you want me to?” he asked.
Of course I didn’t.
I gave him the side-eye.
Thankfully, he let it slide.
“I’m gonna go work with Tonks.” He looked at the groceries. “You need help with this before I do?”
“No. I’ve got it.”
He came to me and gave me a quick kiss.
Then he walked away, whistling and patting his leg.
Tonks danced to him.
He grabbed the lead, and they headed out.
I put away groceries.
After I got that done, I watched that TikTok twenty times.
There were many best parts about it, but one of them (lower down the list) was that Bryce was going to take one look at Hutch, and his dick was going to lose an inch, because Hutch was in reality the kind of man I suspected Bryce thought he was, but deep down, it wrecked him because he knew he wasn’t.
And I didn’t lie to Hutch.
I didn’t care about Bryce anymore.
But that made me glad.