Chapter 44
KATE
Ididn’t realize I was shaking until after Alex had hung up. The apartment felt too small all of a sudden. Too bright. It made everything we’d just been told feel too real.
Nate stood at the counter, staring at the phone like it might start talking to him. Like maybe Alex would call back and say just kidding, it’s nothing. Go back to your perfect little lake weekend.
I wrapped my arms around myself again, feeling like I might fall apart if I didn’t physically hold myself together. “Tell me this isn’t happening.”
“It’s not happening yet,” he said immediately. “It’s gossip. Speculation. We’ll talk to Abram—”
“That’s not what I meant.”
He looked up at me then, and I saw the same sick feeling that was clawing at my gut reflected back in his eyes.
“They know about Emma,” I said slowly. “They. Know. About. Emma.”
He ran a hand through his hair. “Yeah.”
“How?”
“I don’t know.”
I laughed, but it came out brittle and humorless. “Well, someone does.”
He flinched slightly, like he’d heard the accusation underneath the words. “I didn’t tell anyone, Kate.”
I cocked my head at him. “Nate.”
“I didn’t,” he insisted. “Not like that.”
Not like that. The words scraped down my spine as I stumbled back a step. “Then how? Because I didn’t tell anyone at all. Not a single soul, alive or dead. Do you know how hard it was to keep that secret? And you made an exception?”
He hesitated for just a second, but that was enough. My extremities went numb, my heart launching into my throat. “Who did you tell, Nate?”
He exhaled hard and rubbed a palm across his face, dragging it down slowly before he looked at me again. “Will. I told Will. That’s it.”
For a moment, I couldn’t process the words. “You what?”
“I told Will,” he repeated. “It wasn’t a big deal.”
I actually laughed out loud in response because that was the only thing my body seemed capable of doing. “Not a big deal?”
“It wasn’t,” he said. “I had just found out I was going to be marrying you. I was—”
“You were what? Torn?” I snapped. “Confused? Emotionally compromised?”
“Yes,” he said, clearly exasperated. “All of the above. I’d kissed you minutes after telling Emma I was running away with her, but we were getting married and I’d never even seen her. I was a mess, Kate.”
All I could do for a long minute was stare at him. Hard. “You told Will.”
“He’s my brother.”
“And I’m your wife.”
“You weren’t back then. Not yet.” His jaw tightened. “I confided in him. That’s all.”
“That’s all?” I echoed incredulously. “That’s all?”
I started pacing because if I stood still, I knew I might scream. “I kept this secret for years. Years, Nate.”
“I know—”
“I didn’t tell anyone.”
“I know.”
“I didn’t tell my mother, or my father, or a single friend.
” When he said nothing, I went on. “I could have. Do you know how many times I almost did? How many times I wanted to show someone your messages? Or talk about you? Or just say his name out loud?” My throat tightened when I looked back at him.
“But I didn’t because that was the rule.
That was our thing. We both agreed years ago—in writing might I add—that we both operated in circles that could use our online relationship against us.
We saw this coming, even then,” I added under my breath, more to myself than to him.
How could I have been so foolish?
Regret flickered across his handsome features. “I know.”
“And you told Will.”
“He’s not just anyone, Kate.”
“It doesn’t matter!” My voice cracked and I hated that it did. “It matters to me, because I carried this alone. The entire time. After that kiss. After we agreed to run away together? I was still carrying it all alone and you… you got to talk about it.”
His eyebrows pulled together. “That’s not fair.”
“It’s not fair?” I scoffed. “What’s not fair is that you got to talk to someone about how torn up you were and I just had to swallow it.
Process it all by myself. Now, because of that, it’s all going to get dragged through the fucking tabloids, and both of our reputations are going to be obliterated.
And you know who always gets it the worst? The woman.”
“It was one conversation,” he snapped. “One.”
“One too many!” We stared at each other, both breathing too fast as we faced off. My head was spinning, nausea swirling through me.
Finally, he spoke again. “We must’ve been hacked. Or overheard. Or something. This isn’t… it’s not that deep.”
Not that deep. Something inside me twisted into an ugly, furious knot. “Pray tell, how is it not that deep?”
He exhaled hard. “After we got married, he was worried. I’d told him about Emma that night and I agreed to talk to her, but then I never spoke to him about it again, so after we got married, he wanted to make sure I’d taken care of it.
He came by and we talked downstairs in the lounge.
Someone must’ve overheard. That’s the only explanation. ”
I frowned. “I thought you said it was just one conversation, but that’s two conversations, Nate. One of which has now been leaked to the press.”
His mouth pressed into a hard line. “He was just worried, Kate. That’s it. He came over because he was worried. It was a ten-minute conversation. If that. One drink.”
“Oh my God.” I pressed my fingers to my temples. “This is so unfair. Do you have any idea what they’re going to say about me when they find out? Do you have any idea what they’re probably saying about me right now?”
His voice softened. “Kate—”
“No,” I said. “No, you don’t get to do that.”
He frowned. “Do what?”
“Be reasonable,” I snapped. “I don’t want reasonable right now.”
He inhaled a deep breath, eyes tracking mine as I paced up and down a few times, but he didn’t say another word, which was good. Because I wasn’t done.
“I kept this secret for five years and you told your brother the second things got complicated.”
“That’s not why.”
“Then why?” I asked, but as soon as the question came out, the answer popped into my head.
Nate wouldn’t have kept it to himself for so long only to finally run to his brother and blurt it all out simply because he felt guilty for kissing me. No. That didn’t make any sense.
As I looked at him, I realized what it had all been about. In that moment, we probably both knew what it was he didn’t want to say.
“You were struggling to choose.” I finally gave voice to my suspicion. “That’s why you went there, isn’t it? You needed to talk it through because you weren’t sure yet. Me or Emma.” I scrubbed my hands over my face. “This is insane.”
“It is,” he agreed.
“All that time,” I said. “All those years. All those messages. Do you know how many times I almost flew out here to meet you? Do you know how many times I thought about it? How many times I imagined it?”
“I know,” he said quietly. “Because I thought about all those things too.”
“And we just…” I trailed off, gesturing around helplessly. “We just never did it.”
He nodded, pain and old hurt in the furrow between his eyebrows. “We’re together now, Kate. Why are we even talking about this?”
The question slipped out before I could stop it, raw, awful, and impossible to take back. “If Emma were real, if she were a different person than me, who would you have chosen?”
He paled. Like visibly, actually paling after the color had just come back into his cheeks. My heart was suddenly pounding so hard, I could feel it in my throat. I shouldn’t have asked the question. I’d known that even as the words were leaving my mouth. But I needed to know.
Nate went very still, but he didn’t seem confused or blindsided. He just wasn’t moving. I wasn’t even sure he was breathing. It kind of looked like he’d stepped in something deep and cold, and he didn’t want to move too fast for fear of waking the monsters lurking under the surface.
“That’s an unfair question,” he said finally. “Besides, we’ve already talked about this. I told you that I went to the park to break up with Emma, but it was you. So what did you expect me to do? Break up with your alter ego?”
My hands curled into fists at my sides as I shook my head. “That’s not the same thing.”
“It is the same thing.”
“It’s not.”
He dragged a hand through his hair, frustrated now. “Kate—”
“I would have chosen you.” The words came out rough. “I would have chosen you. Nate Westwood. You. Not CB. Not some version of you behind a screen. You.”
He looked at me, something unreadable flickering across his face, but he still hadn’t actually answered my question. Tears welled in my eyes as I looked back at him. “And you know that, don’t you? You know it.”
He didn’t deny that he did either, which made it worse. “So why can’t you answer the question then, Nate?”
Something inside me cracked when I was met with complete silence. I nodded as my vision started to blur. “Okay, then. I guess I have my answer.”
He stepped toward me. “No. Kate—”
“Don’t, Nathaniel. Just don’t. Not right now.” I was already moving, grabbing my bag from the counter with shaking hands. “I need some time. I need space. We’re going to have to deal with the fallout from this tomorrow, but for the rest of the night, just leave me alone.”
“Don’t do this,” he said quietly. “Can we just talk about it please?”
“Do what?” I asked, my voice wobbling despite my best efforts. “Go to my own apartment right across the hall?”
“Kate,” he said again, his voice so much gentler now, but I couldn’t look at him because if I did, I might stay, and if I stayed, I might cry, and if I cried, I wasn’t sure I’d ever stop.
So I walked out, went across the hall, and unlocked my door, my hands shaking so badly I fumbled the key twice before getting it into the lock. Once it was finally open, I went inside and shut the door behind me, turning the deadbolt with a solid, final click.
The silence inside felt enormous as I leaned back against the door, squeezing my eyes shut. I’m fine. Just fine. Ah, fuck. I’m absolutely not fine.
Five years of loving CB. Weeks of falling for Nate. Days of being married to him. Somehow, it was all knotted up in my chest, tangled together with hurt, longing, and uncertainty. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t shake it loose. I just didn’t know how to react to the leak.
I pushed away from the door and took a few unsteady steps into the apartment. I made it as far as the couch before the tears started falling. They were hot as they streaked down my cheeks.
I pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes, trying to stem the flow. This was ridiculous. Nate and I were still married. Nothing had really changed. Tomorrow, we would get up, go to the office, and present a united front.
Yet, it felt like my heart was cracking open, shattering like the illusion that he might’ve chosen me too. I knew he thought it didn’t matter, but somehow, to me, it really did. Because I was all in on him. I loved Nate as Nate, but him?
He loved Emma. Still. Even though she was me and he loved me too, he wouldn’t have chosen me if we hadn’t been the same person and that—
My thoughts were cut off by a scratching sound coming from somewhere. I froze, my heart rate skyrocketing as I lifted my head out of my hands. The sound came again, faint but unmistakable.
Scratch. Scratch.
I turned slowly toward the front door, and for a moment I thought I’d imagined it, but then I heard it again. I moved to the door, hesitating to unlock it until the scratch came again. I opened the door, looked down in the hallway, and saw him. A fluffy orange tabby with a twitching tail.
“Oh,” I breathed, dropping to a crouch to greet him with a scratch under his chin.
The cat padded inside like he owned the place, pausing only briefly when I straightened so he could wind around my ankles in a figure eight. I closed and locked the front door. “Well, hello to you too, buddy. Where did you come from?”
My voice came out watery, but I bent down and scooped him up, burying my face in his soft fur. He let out a tolerant little rumble. “You have pretty great timing, whoever you are.”
He smelled faintly like sunshine, dust, and shampoo, and I sank down onto the couch with him curled against my chest, his steady warmth grounding me in a way nothing else seemed capable of right now.
“Thanks for coming,” I whispered, scratching under his chin. He blinked at me slowly, unimpressed but present. “I needed you tonight.”
He responded by settling more firmly into my arms, like that was answer enough. I pressed my cheek against his head and closed my eyes.
Whoever his owner was, wherever they were, I was deeply, profoundly grateful they let their cat wander. Because tonight, I couldn’t stand the idea of being alone.