Chapter 26
Kelly was exhausted all day after the long night and emotional upheaval that morning, so she ended up taking a nap after going to the park with Caleb and Ralph in the morning.
She woke up without a clear sense of time, pulling the throw blanket she was using up over her shoulders. She felt content, comfortable, and kind of fuzzy. Like she used to when she’d woken up late on Saturday mornings in high school, with nothing but a lazy morning waiting for her.
She didn’t hear the news, however, which the Watsons had always blared on Saturday mornings, and the ceiling was totally wrong.
Kelly stretched out her arms and legs, feeling relaxed and satisfied and toasty.
Remembered the Watsons were dead.
Then remembered her father was dead.
Then she remembered Caleb. And everything that had happened last night and then this morning.
She still felt warm but not quite so content.
It was the bitterest kind of irony. That Caleb Marshall had fallen in love—with her, with the woman who had set out not so long ago to bring him down.
She reminded herself that Jack was thinking now that Caleb likely wasn’t even guilty. She just had to wait another week or two until Jack’s guys could get into the storage room and get the final evidence they needed.
Then she could be done. Then she would know the truth.
Then she would have to leave Caleb for good.
The idea of it hurt so much she turned over on her side and curled into a ball. And it hurt almost as much to imagine how Caleb himself would feel when he found out the truth.
Maybe he wouldn’t have to know. Maybe, if she found out he wasn’t guilty, she could just slip away.
He would be hurt. A lot. But he wouldn’t have to feel so utterly betrayed. He wouldn’t have to know how deeply she’d misused him.
It would be better that way.
Wes had been right at the party, although not for the right reasons.
She was exactly like Hamlet, trapped in a quagmire of her conflicting emotions and human weakness.
Driven by hatred and vengeance but imprisoned by guilt and reluctance.
She only hoped—at the end of all this—she’d be able to pull through more successfully than Hamlet did.
The sound of a door opening roused Kelly from her drowsy reflections. She picked up her head from the pillow and blinked in the direction of the door.
Caleb walked into the bedroom, dressed in a white T-shirt and jeans. He’d been working in his home office but hadn’t actually gone into the office.
He’d changed in more ways than one.
“Hi,” she mumbled, trying to clear her eyes of sleep.
Caleb smiled with a fondness that made her gut clench. “You’re awake.”
Kelly pushed her hair out of her face and tried to break the tender mood. “Are you laughing at me?” she demanded groggily, reacting to the warm amusement in his eyes.
Caleb’s smile broadened as he came over and sat on the edge of the bed. “Certainly not,” he murmured, reaching out to stroke the curve of her hip through the throw blanket. “It’s just that your hair is quite… adventurous at the moment.”
Sitting up in bed and putting her hands on her tousled hair, she tried to give him a cool glare. “I thought you liked it that way.”
“I do.” As he drawled the two words, he leaned over to smooth back some of the tangles.
“That’s what I thought.” She slid her leg away from his hand, which was trailing down to caress it. “And just so you know, laughing at my hair is not the best way to convince me to do what’s on your mind right now.”
Caleb chuckled. “How do you know what’s on my mind?”
“You’re pretty easy to read in that regard.” She rolled away from him when he reached out for her again and then couldn’t help but laugh as they had a teasing scuffle.
Which ended when he was lying on top of her. “I wouldn’t dream of laughing at your hair, especially if it will affect my chances of getting lucky.” He made a move that appeared at first to be adjusting his position, but he ended up lifting her T-shirt to bare her belly.
With a frown, she pulled the shirt back into position. “Are you always this horny?”
“I think we can find a more appropriate word to describe the increase in my libido lately.”
She wanted to giggle at his condescending tone, but she managed to arch her brows haughtily. “You’re saying ‘horny’ is inappropriate?”
His eyes glinted with suppressed amusement. “Sadly, no. But it sounds so undignified.”
She couldn’t stifle the giggle this time. “You never answered the question,” she prompted at last, straightening her T-shirt once more when Caleb’s hand started exploring again. “Are you always this horny?”
Pulling back his hands as she continued to thwart his attempts to disrobe her, he said blandly, “As it happens, no, I’m not. So you only have yourself to blame.”
Kelly shifted restlessly and tried not to like the idea so much. She’d figured he’d been more interested in sex lately than he typically was. They’d had sex at least twice a day this week. If Caleb were always this horny, he’d never get any work done.
He leaned down to kiss her, but it was slow and gentle and didn’t turn immediately into sex the way his kisses normally did. Then he adjusted their positions so she was tucked in the crook of his arm.
She smiled as he pulled the throw blanket over both of them.
“What is that smile for?” he asked, tilting his head down to look at her face.
“You came in here on the pretense of sex, but you really just wanted to take a nap with me.”
He chuckled and pressed a kiss into her hair. “I don’t take naps.”
“Well, you should. They’re very nice.” She stretched out against him and wrapped one arm around him, suddenly wishing desperately that they didn’t have this immovable obstacle between them.
It would be so nice. To be close to him like this. Just a simple Saturday afternoon.
No more lies or secrets.
“What’s the matter?” he asked, one hand running down the length of her loose hair.
“What do you mean?”
“You got tense.”
“Nothing. Not really. Just…” She didn’t want to lie to him. It felt wrong in a way she couldn’t articulate. She wanted to tell him the truth, so she managed to find the truest thing she could say. “It just feels complicated sometimes.”
“What does?”
“Us. Our relationship.”
He didn’t reply immediately, but she could tell he was thinking about what she’d said. He proved it by eventually murmuring, “I guess it is complicated. We’re not easy people. Either one of us.”
“No,” she sighed. “I just sometimes wish… we were.”
“You mean be like other people? Everyone has some sort of complications.”
“I know. But I think we take complicated to a new level. With all our baggage, I mean.”
“Anytime you’d like to unload any of that baggage,” he murmured, very softly, “I’m happy to hear what you have to say.”
She sighed, realizing it still bothered him that she was keeping secrets from him even though he had no idea about the worst of her secrets.
He wanted to hear about the made-up Russian gangster that she’d supposedly had a relationship with in the past and who had trouble taking no for an answer.
She couldn’t tell him about that, though, because it would be nothing but a lie.
She was so tired of lying. She didn’t want to do it anymore.
And she wanted to know the truth from him. She needed to know he was innocent.
“I saw my uncle die,” she heard herself saying.
She felt his body tighten beside her. “What? The one you loved? Who was like a dad to you?”
“Yeah. Him.” She cleared her throat, knowing she couldn’t give him too many details or he could possibly put them together and figure out her identity.
But she needed to share something with him, and this was the deepest thing in her life.
And maybe she could tell from his expression whether anything in the story hit home with him—not proof of his innocence but at least some clue to give her direction.
“It was a… a hunting accident. But I was with him. He was shot, and I saw him die.”
Caleb was silent for a long time, but his arm had tightened around her. “The woods,” he breathed at last. “That’s why you’re scared of the woods.”
“Yeah.” Her voice broke since it was so hard to talk about even under the false pretense. “Sometimes I feel like I… I’ve never really gotten past that day, that my whole life just circles around it.”
“With that kind of trauma, when you’re young, it’s not surprising. That’s why you’ve not had many close relationships?”
“I don’t think I’ve had any close relationships. Except with Reese, my best friend.”
“And me,” he added, nuzzling her hair.
“And you.” She stroked his chest over his shirt and realized how true this was.
“What about your parents?”
“I was never really close to my mom, and it got worse after my… my uncle died. Her brother. She couldn’t get over his death. My dad worked, and she just… died slowly year after year.”
Caleb didn’t say anything, didn’t offer any superficial platitudes. It was a relief since anything he said wouldn’t have come close to answering the way she was feeling.
Naked. Vulnerable. But still safe somehow, as if she could trust Caleb with what she’d offered him.
“Sometimes I feel like I’m living in a Shakespeare play,” she said after a minute, remembering her reflections earlier.
“Romeo and Juliet?” There was a little smile in his eyes, a dry humor that could never be fully stamped out.
She loved that about him.
She smiled. “No. They were so young—and barely knew each other. That doesn’t feel like me at all.
I was thinking one of his more mature tragedies.
Hamlet or something. Where one act sets off this whole downward spiral of events, and no matter how hard you try, you simply can’t pull yourself out of them.
Sometimes my life feels that way. Since my father’s death, I’ve never been able to pull out of the downward spiral. ”