28. Kate
KATE
I asked Bennett to come to Brynn's home.
That was the text I sent him this morning, and now I was sitting in Brynn's living room waiting for him to show up, my hands folded in my lap like I could keep myself together if I just held on tight enough.
She was out at the shop for the afternoon.
I told her I needed the place to myself for an hour, maybe two, and she didn't ask why.
She just looked at me for a long moment, squeezed my shoulder once, and handed me her spare key.
I wanted the truth about the cabin. I wanted to hear it from him, not from Priscilla's smug mouth or from the rumors that were probably still circulating through the village like smoke I couldn't clear. I wanted to know what actually happened that night, and I wanted Bennett to say it to my face.
Part of me was braced for an excuse. Part of me expected him to walk in here and explain it all away with logic, the way he always did.
The storm was unexpected. Priscilla needed shelter.
It made sense at the time. I could already hear the words forming in my head, and my stomach twisted hard at the thought of them.
I stood up. Sat back down. My knee bounced against the coffee table, rattling Brynn's teacup from this morning. I made myself stop. Stood up again and went to the window, looking out at the snow-covered street.
God, I was ridiculous. I was a grown woman pacing like a teenager.
The knock came exactly when he said it would. Bennett was never late, not for business and apparently not for this either.
I took a breath that didn't steady me at all and opened the door.
There he was. Dark coat open over a flannel shirt, no hat, snow melting in his hair and on his shoulders. He looked at me with those steady gray eyes, and I felt my pulse kick up hard against my will, a jolt straight down my spine. I hated that my body still did that.
"Kate," he said. Just my name.
I stepped back, my hand tight on the doorknob. "Come in."
He walked past me into the small living room, and I shut the door behind him, the latch clicking into place.
The space felt smaller with him in it. He was too tall for Brynn's cottage, too solid, and the warmth coming off him hit me like a reminder of every winter morning we used to share. I pushed that thought down hard.
I didn't offer him a seat. I just crossed my arms over my chest and faced him, putting the coffee table between us like it could protect me.
"I asked you here because I want to know what happened," I said. My voice stayed level, which was something. "The night in the cabin. I want the truth."
Bennett didn't look away. He didn't hesitate or wave me off or tell me it didn't matter anymore. He just nodded once, slow and deliberate, like he'd been expecting this question.
"Priscilla set it up," he said.
The words hung there between us, flat and simple. I waited for more, but he didn't add anything. No qualifiers. No but she didn't mean it or I didn't know at the time. Just that simple, terrible statement.
I could barely get the words out. "Set it up how?"
"Imogen helped her." His jaw tightened, a muscle jumping there, and I saw something flicker across his face — anger, maybe, or shame, or both.
"The resort's records show Imogen had the cabin made ready for Priscilla before the storm even started.
She ordered it two days before the storm.
Fresh linens. Firewood stacked. The good food in the pantry, the kind we keep for VIP guests.
Everything Priscilla would need for a cozy night alone in the mountains. "
I felt my hands curl into fists against my ribs, my nails digging into my palms. I wanted to hit something.
I wanted to scream. I wanted to throw Brynn's teacup at the wall and watch it shatter.
But instead I just stood there, frozen, my whole body locked up tight, waiting for him to shift the blame onto them.
Waiting for him to tell me it was all their fault and he was just caught in the middle, an innocent bystander in his own life.
He didn't.
"I called your storm warning good for business," Bennett said, and his voice was rough now, lower than usual.
He wasn't looking at me like he wanted sympathy or forgiveness.
He was just looking at me, steady and unflinching.
"You told me it was coming. You came to my office the day it was due and told me it would hit that night.
You asked me to close the upper runs early and pull the staff down. And I ignored you."
My chest hurt. I remembered that conversation.
I remembered standing by his door with my hands folded in front of me, telling him two feet, maybe more.
I remembered the way he finished his call, leaned back, and then stood and came around the desk with his hands in his pockets, warm and patient, like I was a child who needed reassurance.
"You said two feet of snow was a gift," I said. The words came out sharper than I meant them to.
"I did."
"You said closing early was a loss of revenue we couldn't afford."
"I did," Bennett said again. He took a step toward me, then stopped, like he'd hit an invisible line he knew better than to cross.
"I was wrong, Kate. You were right, and I didn't listen.
I thought you were worrying over nothing, making a mountain out of an anthill the way I always told you that you did.
I saw the bookings and the expansion, and I put the money ahead of the people on the mountain. "
My throat went so tight I could barely breathe. I'd carried that memory for a hundred and ten days — the moment I told him about the storm and he smiled at me and said it would be fine. I remembered the exact look on his face when he came around the desk, how kind he looked while he said no.
"You didn't just dismiss the warning," I said. My voice was shaking now, and I couldn't stop it. "You dismissed me."
Bennett's eyes closed for a second, and when he opened them again I saw something in them that looked like pain. "I know."
"You always did that."
"I know," he said again. "I was wrong, Kate.
About the storm. About you. About all of it.
I never listened to you, not the way I should have, and I'm not going to stand here and tell you I didn't know what I was doing, because that's a lie.
I knew you were good at reading the weather.
I knew you were good at keeping people safe. I just thought I knew better."
I wanted him to stop talking. I wanted him to keep going. My chest felt like it was caving in, and I didn't know what to do with my hands, so I kept them locked tight against my ribs, holding myself together.
Priscilla had told me about that night in the cabin.
She'd stood in Brynn's shop seventy-eight days ago and looked me in the eye and said she and Bennett had been snowed in together in that cabin all night, that it was intimate, that my ring had been on his desk and he'd told her what it meant.
She said it like it was a fact, like she had proof, and I believed her.
I believed her because it fit. Because Bennett had a history of putting everyone else first — his family, his business, his empire — and I always came last. So why wouldn't he have wanted Priscilla in that cabin?
Why wouldn't he have chosen her the same way he chose every deal and every dinner with investors and every late meeting that took him away from me?
But he was standing here now in Brynn's small living room, and he wasn't hiding behind his mother. He wasn't blaming Priscilla for setting the trap or Imogen for helping her spring it. He was owning the part that was his, the choice he made when he ignored my warning.
I thought about what Priscilla had said to me at the shop, the way she smiled when she said it. Bennett knew it too — she must have told him when she was trying to twist the knife.
"You know what I believed," I said. It wasn't a question.
"Priscilla told me." Bennett's voice was quiet now. Careful.
"And?"
His gaze didn't waver. "And you had every reason to believe it, Kate. Every reason in the world."
That hit me harder than I expected, like a punch straight to the stomach.
My stomach flipped, and I had to look away from him because I didn't want him to see my face.
I didn't want him to know how much I'd hoped — stupidly, desperately, impossibly hoped — that he could prove her wrong.
That he could stand here and tell me it was all a lie, that he never wanted Priscilla, that he saw through the whole setup.
I couldn't say that out loud. I wouldn't give him that piece of me, not when I was still holding onto my pride by my fingernails.
But God, I'd wanted it to be a lie. I'd wanted it so badly I could taste it.
Bennett stayed where he was on the other side of the coffee table.
He didn't move toward me. He didn't press me for an answer or try to fill the silence with more explanations, more apologies.
He just stood there and let me take it in, and I hated that I noticed the way his hands hung loose at his sides, the way he wasn't asking me for anything.
He used to do that — fill every silence with logic, with reasons, with a plan to fix whatever I was upset about. He used to treat my feelings like problems to solve. But he wasn't doing that now.
I turned back to him, and my voice came out quieter than I meant it to. "The resort records. You saw them yourself?"
"I did. I pulled everything from that week — maintenance requests, supply orders, staffing schedules."
"And Imogen really?—"
"She did." His mouth was a hard line now, and I could see the anger there, barely held in check.
"She ordered it under her own executive account and marked it priority, and it was finished the day before Priscilla asked me to check the trail markers.
The note on the request said For Ms. Harrington.
It was sitting in the system the whole time. "
"Why did you go looking?" I asked. "Why did you pull the records?"
Bennett's eyes stayed on mine, and for a second I thought he wasn't going to answer, that he'd reached the limit of what he was willing to tell me.
Then he said, "Because I needed to know what I missed.
I needed to see how far back it went, how long they'd been working against you while I looked the other way. "
Something in my chest cracked open at that. I wanted to ask him what else he found. I wanted to know if there were other nights, other cabins, other moments where his family had schemed against me while he chose to believe the best of them. But I didn't ask. I wasn't ready for those answers yet.
The worst thing I believed was a lie. That was what I had to sit with now.
Priscilla had lied to me — about the night in the cabin, about what it meant, about all of it.
She'd lied straight to my face, and I'd believed her, because believing her made perfect sense.
It fit the pattern of eight years, the slow accumulation of proof that I didn't matter to him.
I couldn't keep my hands still. I pressed them flat against my sides and made myself breathe in through my nose, out through my mouth, the way Brynn had taught me.
"The divorce is still going ahead," I said.
Bennett nodded. No hesitation. "I know."
"This doesn't change that."
"I know," he said again. His voice was steady, but I saw something shift in his face, something that looked like acceptance or maybe resignation. "I'm not asking you to stop it, Kate. I'm not asking you for anything. I'm just telling you the truth, because you deserve to know it."
I believed him. That was the part that scared me most. I believed him, and I didn't know what to do with that belief, where to put it, how to fit it into the story I'd been telling myself.
We stood there in Brynn's small living room, the two of us, and the silence stretched out between us like the cross-country trail we'd skied eight days ago.
He'd listened to me then. He'd let me tell him a worry about the village council's plan to pave the east meadow, and he hadn't waved it off or answered me with logic.
He'd just nodded and adjusted his path to match mine, skiing beside me instead of ahead.
I didn't forgive him. I wasn't anywhere close to that, and I didn't know if I ever would be. But I wasn't holding onto the lie anymore either. I was letting it go, watching it fall away like snow off a branch.
"Okay," I said. Just that. It was all I had.
Bennett looked at me, and I thought he might say something else — might ask me what I was thinking or tell me he was sorry one more time or try to fix this the way he used to try to fix everything.
But he didn't. He just nodded once, slow and deliberate, like he understood that okay was all I had to give him right now.
"I should go," he said.
I didn't stop him. I walked him to the door, my legs feeling strange and unsteady beneath me, and opened it. He stepped out into the cold, and the afternoon air rushed in, sharp and clean. Snow was falling again, light and steady, covering the village in white.
Bennett turned back to look at me, one hand on the railing of Brynn's porch. "Thank you for asking me here, Kate. For giving me the chance to tell you."
I didn't have an answer for that, didn't have words for what I was feeling, so I just nodded.
He walked down the path toward his truck, his boots crunching in the fresh snow, and I stood in the doorway and watched him go. When he reached the street he turned back one more time, just a glance, and then he was gone.
I shut the door and leaned my back against it, sliding down until I was sitting on Brynn's floor with my knees pulled up to my chest. My chest hurt.
My breath came in pieces. I felt like I'd been holding my breath for seventy-eight days and I'd finally let it out, and now I didn't know how to breathe normal again.
The worst thing I believed was a lie.
I closed my eyes and let that sink in, let it settle into my bones.
But the rest of it was still true.