22. Wentworth
TWENTY-TWO
Wentworth
There are two things I hate most in this world—climbers and cheaters.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve been surrounded by both. People who look at me and my sister and see nothing more than opportunity for more.
More money.
More access.
More acceptance.
I grew up knowing that more is all most people believe I have to offer. That none of them really knew me. Cared for me past what I could give them.
Neither of my parents have any concept of fidelity. Affairs and divorce were on a constant loop throughout my childhood. If not for my grandparents, who were so faithful to each other they died within hours of each other, I’d have no idea what fidelity even looked like.
Brock Morris is a conceited prick but he’s also set to inherit the second biggest ranch in the valley. From what I’ve heard around town, he and Kait used to go together back in high school... he showed up at the house a few days ago and I interrupted an argument between them. He told me to mind my own business and that he and Kait were engaged. When I asked her about it after he left, she confirmed it.
After that, I stopped listening.
Damien left a few hours later and I went inside after seeing him off to clean up our dinner mess, loading my own damn dishwasher and running it before I went upstairs to go to bed.
In bed, I stared at the ceiling for about ten minutes before I was back downstairs, too pissed and hurt to sleep.
Climbers and cheaters.
How in the hell did I manage to find a woman who happens to be both—in fucking Montana of all places. In places like California or New York, they’re easy to spot. I can see them coming from a mile away but here... I got sloppy. Lazy. Taken in by the way she blushes every time she looks at me. The fact that she seemed to see past the armor and see me for who I really am.
Like art.
That’s the part that really got me.
The two words that did me in.
Like art.
They chased themselves around my head for hours until they were nothing but a convoluted mess of memories and emotions, balled up in my gut—memories of being forced to sit on the sidelines and watch my parents build and destroy relationships over and over. The way it used to make me feel. Helpless and out of control.
I stood in the kitchen and waited for her because I wanted her to know that yeah—maybe she did see me.
But I saw her too.
A cheater and a climber.
Just like the rest of them.
And what did she have to say for herself when it was all out in the open?
I’m sorry.
When she said it, I realized that up until that moment, I’d been hoping she would deny it. Tell me that Damien got it wrong. That it was all some big misunderstanding. Instead, she apologized and ran out the door with her tail tucked between her legs like a whipped dog.
You’re roughly three times her size, moron, and you were up in her face. Notebook full of dick jokes and hands-on tattoo tour notwithstanding, she doesn’t know you from a hole in the ground. Of course, she ran—she’s a cheating climber, not a dummy with a death wish.
The slam of the door behind her was like a starting pistol. The second I heard it, I was turned toward the sound and chasing after her because even though I told her to leave, that I never wanted to see her fucking face again, I was suddenly terrified that she’d listen to me.
That I was never going to see her fucking face again.
Stopping in the doorway between the mudroom and the kitchen, I lean against the doorjamb on a sigh. Giving my face a heavy-handed swipe, I listen to her tear around the back of the house on her horse, its fast, heavy hooves chewing into the ground so hard I hear dirt and rock spray against the side of the porch.
Kait’s gone.
She’s not coming back.
“Good.” I say it out loud in hopes of making myself believe it but I don’t think it worked.
Kait left her backpack.
I’ve been dancing around it for hours now, oscillating between wanting to go through it and just tossing it out the front door into the dirt. Finally picking it up off the counter, that’s exactly what I tell myself I’m going to do. She’ll be back for it. I know she will. Leaving it for her to find, thrown in the driveway, sends a message loud and clear.
I meant what I said .
I open the front door but instead of launching it off the porch and slamming it closed, I find myself sitting in my favorite chair with it on my lap.
Telling myself it’s already unzipped, so I might as well look inside, I reach in and immediately feel the tall, heavy can of bear repellant she showed me a few days ago. Pulling it out, I set it on the porch next to my chair before reaching back in, this time pulling out her laptop. Damien was right—it’s destroyed, guts hanging out of it’s cracked, plastic casing, the sight of it making me think of Con. He has crates of old, broken computers all over his apartment. I bet if I sent it to him, he could fix it.
Setting it on the table next to me, I reach in again, my hand closing over a thick stack of notebooks. Pulling them out, I look inside. That’s it. Aside from a few pens and a hairbrush, it’s empty.
What did you expect to find? A book titled, The Climber’s Guide to Cheating?
Setting the backpack aside, I concentrate on the notebooks. There’s got to be a least ten of them. All single subject, each with a different color cover.
Flipping the top one open, I scan its pages and quickly see that it’s one she uses for her math class. Scanning the equations, I think of Con again. He’s a closeted math nerd. He'd be able to understand the numbers and symbols I’m looking at without breaking a sweat .
Closing it, I put it back in the backpack. Opening the next one, I can see that it’s for some sort of science class—Biology. Maybe anatomy. Putting it back in the backpack, I open number three, this one a dog-eared dark blue. Easily the oldest in the stack.
The first line, written in the same handwriting I’ve come to recognize as her says:
Tell Luke I’m sorry
I don’t know who Luke is or why Kait feels the need to apologize to him. Probably some guy she fucked over. Trying not to let it bother me or wonder about it, I read the second line.
Tell my father to fuck off
For reasons I understand all too well, that one makes me smile, in spite of myself. This is Kait’s bucket list. A running list of all the things she wants to do in life but is too afraid to say out loud. Flipping through the pages, I can see that it’s been made over a span of years, different things written at different times, in different ink.
The third line reads:
Put horse shit in Abbey’s pillow
It takes me a few seconds to remember what Damien told me the first day I was here—that Kait has a little sister named Abbey.
Again, I can enjoy the sentiment.
Laughing out loud, I flip the page and find more of the same.
Teach Two-tone how to count
Swim in the Ocean
Learn how to rope
Get a tattoo
Climb the Eiffel Tower
Go skinny-dipping
See the Statue of Liberty
Visit the Grand Canyon
See a movie in a real movie theater
Learn to Surf
Order room service
Kiss Brock Morris
That one kills the smile. Tightens my jaw and almost makes me slam the notebook closed. Instead, I flip through the pages again, scanning them until I get to the last set of entries.
Kiss him
Above it, it says:
Touch his tattoos
Like art.
The words I thought I’d finally managed to chase off circle back, slamming into me so hard, I suddenly can’t take a breath. Scanning down the rest of the list, I read the rest of what she’s written down.
Let him draw me
Ask him who gave him his nickname
Have an orgasm before I die
Ask him to fuck me
Shit.
Doing what I should’ve done in the first place, I slap the notebook closed before shoving it and the rest of her stuff back into her backpack. Zipping it up, I toss it on the table, leaving it behind to take a walk around the lake.