17. Chapter 17
Cate
July - Twelve Years Ago
By the time I reached the cabin, my chest hurt for reasons that had nothing to do with my fall or the scraped skin that covered my body.
Opening the door, I was met with chaos.
The table had been dragged into the living room. Beer bottles lay everywhere. Music thumping too loud, at complete odds with the quiet outside.
John was laughing.
Not just laughing - gone. Folded into the noise and the game and the distraction.
He didn’t even look at me.
Something cracked and I turned away before he could see my face and locked myself in the bathroom.
The water covered the sound of my crying, but barely.
I scrubbed at my knees until they burned, until the sting gave me something else to focus on. I didn’t want to be the girl who cried because her boyfriend didn’t notice her. I hated that girl.
A knock hit the door.
Then another.
“Just a minute,” I called, wiping my face.
When I opened the door, Trevor stumbled inside like he owned the place.
I jumped back as he lifted the toilet seat.
“Oh my God…” I muttered, stepping into the hallway.
He came out seconds later, blinking like he’d just realized I existed.
“You okay?” he asked, slurring slightly.
I shook my head. “I’m fine.”
“You don’t look fine,” he said, stepping closer. His fingers brushed my cheek, a little too familiar, too personal, and I flinched.
“That’s not…” I started.
“I just want to help,” he said quietly. “You don’t deserve to be upset.”
The words felt wrong.
I wiped my face and forced myself to smile. “I’m fine, really. You should get back to your game.”
He hiccupped and shook his head. “Not until you tell me what’s bothering you.”
I stared down at the floor. I didn’t really want to get into it, not with him anyway.
“Come on,” he prodded. “You can tell me. I promise I’m too drunk to remember it tomorrow.”
I exhaled shakily and told him everything, because I was tired, because I needed to say it out loud, because part of me still believed honesty would save me.
“I thought… I thought when I came back, he’d be waiting.”
“He didn’t ignore you on purpose,” Trevor said. “That’s on me. I brought the beer.”
I nodded, because blaming him felt easier than admitting how much it hurt.
“Maybe write him a note,” he suggested. “Ask him to meet you somewhere private once he’s had a chance to sober up a little.”
That made sense.
It felt safer, easier than keeping everything bottled up inside.
I hugged him quickly, too quickly, and pulled away before he could read more into it.
I tried to ignore the drunken stupor coming from the living room as I made my way to the kitchen, but it was hard. Seth was lying on the floor, and they were all laughing like it was the funniest thing they had ever seen. I shook my head.
I rummaged through the kitchen drawers until I found a notepad and a pen. I stared at the blank sheet of paper until finally settling on short and sweet. I asked him to meet me at my thinking spot at sunset.
I folded the sheet in half, added his name to it, and made my way back to the living room. As I reached the table, John reached out and scooped up a pile of cards.
I wrapped my arms around his neck and whispered in his ear. “Hey, can we talk for a second?”
He leaned back and kissed me on the cheek. “Can it wait just a minute? I’m about to win.”
The other guys at the table started to laugh.
“Please,” I asked. “This is important.”
“Anyone need another beer?" Jim asked.
Seth, still lying splayed across the floor, raised a hand in the air, “I’ll take one!”
“Bar’s closed, gentlemen,” Trevor said, eyeing me sympathetically.
John shuffled the cards and slammed them onto the table. “Just a minute,” he said, giving my hand a quick squeeze. “Deal, man.” He then said to no one in particular. “I need to win my money back.”
Seth let out a few more shaky laughs before pushing up from the floor and taking his seat. He scooped up the cards. “Jim, you in?”
“Yeah, I’m in.”
“What about you, Trev?" Seth asked.
Trevor shook his head. “I’m gonna sit this one out.”
“You snooze you lose!" John said. He slapped the table, hard enough to make it shake. “Come on, let’s go!”
I looked at the note, still clenched in my hand, and decided to slide it underneath his nearly empty beer. There was no way he’d miss it there.
I slid on a new pair of shoes and headed out to my spot and waited.
The waiting was agony.
When someone touched my shoulder in the dark, relief flooded me so fast I didn’t question it.
“John,” I breathed. “I-I love you.”
I kissed him without opening my eyes, desperate, reckless, and beyond relieved that he came.
As he pressed into me, I realized something was off.
His scent was wrong; his taste was wrong.
I pulled back and saw Trevor’s face just inches from mine.
I slapped him hard enough to sting my palm.
“What the hell are you doing?” I shouted.
“I… I thought…”
“No,” I said, backing away. “You don’t get to think.”
He reached for me again. “Please!” he pleaded. “I’m sorry. Don’t tell John.”
I didn’t respond, turning instead to run.
Back to the cabin. Back into the noise. Back into the lie I’d now have to live with.
I reached the cabin steps and stopped.
Laughter spilled through the open windows, loud, careless, and untouched by what had just happened. Cards slapped against wood. Someone whooped. Someone swore. John’s laugh threaded through it all, bright and unguarded.
My hand hovered over the doorframe, but I couldn’t make myself cross the threshold. I couldn’t walk back into that room pretending nothing was wrong.
Gravel crunched behind me.
I turned just in time to see Trevor slowing, his face pale now, stripped of whatever courage had carried him there in the dark. He stopped a few feet away, hands lifting slightly like he didn’t know what to do with them.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly.
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t.
He nodded once, like he finally understood that this was past the point of fixing, then turned and went inside.
The door swung shut behind him.
Seconds stretched. My pulse roared in my ears.
A minute later I heard the door creak open. I looked up and saw John standing there, his expression shifting the moment he saw me. The noise inside my head, the panic, the guilt, the fear, cut out completely.
Because when John looked at me, really looked, all I saw was concern.
Not anger. Not betrayal.
Love.
“Cate?” he said.
I turned away before he could see my face. I didn’t trust myself not to break apart.
He was there in seconds.
One moment I was standing on my own, arms wrapped tight around myself, and the next his hands were on my shoulders, firm and familiar, turning me gently back toward him. I barely had time to breathe before he pulled me into his chest.
I didn’t fight it.
The second his arms closed around me, everything I’d been holding in collapsed. I clutched at his shirt and cried so hard it stole the air from my lungs.
“We were supposed to talk,” he said quietly, close to my ear.
I nodded against him, unable to form words.
He didn’t ask anything else. He just guided me back inside, his hand steady at my back, like he’d already decided I didn’t have to face the room full of people.
The cabin seemed to hush when we entered, not because it actually did, but because I stopped hearing anything except him.
He lifted me onto the kitchen counter, his hands careful, then paused, looking around like he was suddenly realizing what I already had.
There was nowhere private to go.
His jaw tightened for half a second, then softened.
“Hang on,” he said, and disappeared down the hall.
When he came back, the bathroom door was open, and steam was already curling into the hallway. He didn’t say a word, just helped me down and carried me across the hall. He undressed me slowly, like I might shatter if he rushed it, his fingers tender where they touched me.
When he eased me into the warm water, my shoulders finally loosened, just a little. And for the first time since I’d run back to the cabin, I felt like I could breathe.
He pressed a gentle kiss to my cheek, careful, like I might fracture under anything heavier. “Will you be okay if I step out for a minute?”
I looked up at him, trying to arrange my face into something steady. Something normal. I wasn’t even sure why I felt so sad, only that something fundamental had shifted today, that I’d crossed a line I couldn’t uncross.
I nodded, then hesitated. “You’re coming back, right?”
The words came out rougher than I meant them to. Needier. I hated that. I hated the way fear made me sound like someone I didn’t recognize.
“I mean,” I added quickly, trying to fix it, “later. You don’t have to…”
He smiled softly and kissed my hand, grounding me with the simple contact. “I’ll only be a minute.”
I watched him leave without blinking, the door clicking shut behind him. Voices murmured in the hall too low to make out and then, suddenly, a sharp thud echoed through the cabin.
They’d gone outside.
I leaned back in the tub and let my mind do what it did best. Catastrophize.
I imagined John coming back furious. Cold.
Telling me this wasn’t going to work. I imagined Trevor confessing everything - the kiss, the confusion, the way I hadn’t opened my eyes fast enough.
I imagined John punching him, breaking his nose, storming out of the cabin with his bag while insisting I stay because that was the kind of man he was.
I imagined losing everything in a dozen different ways.
The thought lodged deep and sharp in my chest. I guess it was a good thing I’d kept my apartment.
The bathroom door opened and I jolted upright, heart racing. John stood there, framed by the doorway, and I searched his face for anger, for rage, for something I could prepare myself against.
There was none.
Only sadness.
I swallowed hard and leaned forward, apology already forming. “John, I…”
“I’m so sorry,” he said quietly, stepping inside.
The words didn’t make sense. Sorry? He hadn’t kissed someone else. He hadn’t panicked. He hadn’t run.
I folded in on myself, hugging my knees to my chest.
Without another word, he picked up the sponge and poured warm water slowly over my back, his touch steady, and deliberate. The warmth soaked in, easing the ache in my shoulders, the sting in my scraped skin, the tight knot in my chest.
He rubbed gentle circles, unhurried.
After a long moment, he set the sponge aside. “How did this happen?”
I froze.
For a moment there, I let myself think maybe Trevor hadn’t told him. Maybe I’d imagined the whole thing spiraling this far. God, I was an idiot.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, staring at the wall. I couldn’t look at him. I couldn’t bear to see the hurt I knew had to be there.
His hand settled on my shoulder, careful of the places that still ached. “Look at me.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. I couldn’t. Hurting him felt unbearable, and that was exactly what I’d done.
When he didn’t say anything else, I finally opened one eye.
He was smiling.
Not amused or dismissive. Just… gentle.
“So,” he said softly, “what did you want to talk about?”
My throat closed. I’d barely managed to say it once, how was I supposed to do it again?
“I-I don’t know where to start,” I admitted. “Did you talk to Trevor?”
He nodded.
The water drained from the tub with a hollow sound as I pulled the plug, then wrapped myself in a towel, suddenly cold. “Then I guess there’s nothing left to say except… I’m sorry.”
Confusion crossed his face, quick and unmistakable. He stood and left the room without a word.
My chest tightened. This is it.
When he came back a moment later, he was holding my duffel bag. That same quiet sadness lingered in his eyes, and I wondered if I’d mistaken it for love all along.
Either way, this felt like the end.
I clutched the towel tighter and reached for the bag.
“I didn’t know what you’d want to wear,” he said, running a hand through his hair, tension evident in the movement. “So, I brought the whole thing.”
I blinked. “What?”
He stepped back toward the hallway. “I’ll wait out there.”
“Wait.” I caught his arm, panic spiking. “There’s something I need to tell you.”
“Get dressed,” he said gently. “We’ll talk when you’re done.”
He turned to leave.
“I kissed Trevor!” I blurted.
John stopped.
He turned back, a faint, knowing smile tugging at his mouth. “I know.”