Chapter 33
Kelsi
The next morning, Kelsi felt like an empty shell of herself. Her eyes were swollen and red from crying herself to sleep the night before. She’d barely had the wherewithal to lock and dead bolt the doors and do a brief sweep of the house with her taser held in front of her before the tears came.
Luckily, Abby had already been asleep in the guest bedroom, so she was able to avoid the conversation for now, but it would only be a matter of time before she walked into the kitchen for coffee and found Kelsi.
She knew she’d made a mistake, that she should have told Dylan earlier about the threats. He was right—it didn’t affect just her own safety, but his and the integrity of their case together. He was right to be angry, but it didn’t make her feel any better.
She sighed and moved slowly to brew a pot of coffee. What else was there to do? She had to figure out how to keep everyone safe while the trial happened, because it would be going forward. McGuinness and his errand boy couldn’t get away with ruining everything in Kelsi’s life as well as a murder.
Footsteps in the hall had Kelsi’s shoulders stiffening, hands gripping the counter in front of her tightly.
“Is that coffee I smell? Give me. I have something I need to tell you, but I need caffeine first.” Abby’s sleep-thick voice echoed loudly in the quiet kitchen, and Kelsi silently grabbed a mug and filled it for her.
Abby’s gasp when Kelsi turned and she saw her face told her exactly how rough she looked.
She rushed to Kelsi’s side and wrapped her in a hug.
“What happened?” she murmured into Kelsi’s hair.
“Dylan . . .” was all Kelsi could manage to say before her throat closed and she couldn’t say any more.
Plus, she wasn’t sure exactly what to tell Abby.
She didn’t want to lie to her best friend, but she couldn’t tell her everything that happened between them without also telling her about the stalker, and she couldn’t do that yet.
Knowing Abby, she’d charge headfirst at the unknown stalker without a second thought.
Kelsi still hoped she could resolve this on her own and not bring anyone else into her mess. Well, anyone else aside from Dylan now.
Abby held her tightly, letting her fall apart in her arms. Once Kelsi had calmed down enough, Abby leaned back to look into her face, wiping her friend’s tears with a sad smile.
“If you can’t talk about what happened last night, want to finally tell me exactly what happened between you and Dylan all those years ago?
I know you only ever gave me the bare minimum, and I never pushed you for more than you were ready to share, but I want to know everything. ”
Kelsi took a deep breath, steadying herself before she began to explain how Dylan had broken her heart the first time.
“I’ve told you before that I loved him for a while, but I didn’t truly realize how much until we were in law school together.
College apart made it easier with the distance between us, but being in law school together, I couldn’t escape it.
He had a girlfriend in law school, do you remember? ” She cut a glance at Abby, who nodded.
“She was in our year with us, and he started seeing her our first year. They were on-again, off-again every other month it felt like, and stupid me thought every time they broke up that he would finally be done with her and see me. That he’d finally notice me as something more than the girl he’d made mud pies with.
But he didn’t. That night before graduation, they’d been broken up for three months, which was the longest they’d gone without getting back together.
I decided that was the time to make my move.
” Kelsi grabbed her coffee mug and took a big sip, waiting for the caffeine to hit her system and give her a much-needed serotonin boost. “I had liquid courage on my side, so when he and I found ourselves alone outside the bar, I kissed him. I kissed him, then I told him I loved him. We were interrupted before he could say anything back, and he asked me to meet him the next day in the library after the ceremony. When I found him, though . . .” Kelsi’s voice trailed off and she gripped her mug tightly.
When she didn’t continue immediately, Abby softly prompted, “When you found him?”
“He was kissing her. His ex. He must have felt bad for me, poor little Red, thinking her best friend loved her too. He didn’t have to say anything, that kiss said it all. So I ran. He tried to talk to me after, but I couldn’t face him.”
“Oh, Kelsi. Was that the last time you saw him before your first day?”
“No.” Kelsi sighed, remembering the next time they were in the same place, a couple months later. “The last time I saw him was at the bar exam, that July. He wouldn’t even look at me during the test.”
It had taken everything in Kelsi to focus on the exam in front of her and not the man two rows to her right who wouldn’t acknowledge her at all. She thought he’d hurt her enough already, but him pretending she didn’t exist? That had been the last straw.
“It wasn’t so bad though. At least Tom was there to study with. We stayed up way too late in my hotel room that night running through our property-law flashcards.”
“So,” Abby said softly, “he got back together with his girlfriend, and you were with Tom?”
“I don’t think he got back together with his ex, actually.
I mean, I guess I wouldn’t know, but he deployed right after the bar exam, and she started posting pictures with some new guy not long after.
And Tom, you know that story. He asked me out a couple times in law school, but I was never interested.
Not with Dylan there every day. Nothing happened with Tom until a year later when we were both in Virginia Beach.
” Kelsi shrugged, done with the recap of her shitty love life.
“I’m sorry, babe.” Abby pulled her in for another hug, this one shorter.
“Okay, enough about me. What did you have to tell me that you needed coffee for first?”
Abby winced, putting more space between them as she leaned back against the kitchen counter behind her. “I wish I didn’t have to tell you this now, but you need to know, and I don’t know that any time will be good.”
Kelsi’s stomach dropped. “What is it?”
“So, since you brought up Sheridan, I might have run a teensy little background check on him.”
“And you found something?”
“I found something. Last night,” Abby confirmed with another grimace. She took a long sip from her coffee, leaving Kelsi waiting anxiously to hear what it was. “He, um, well, he’s married.”
“He’s what?” Kelsi must have heard Abby wrong. There was no way he was married. Someone in town would’ve known, right? This place was too small to hide a whole wife.
“Married.”
Nope, Kelsi had definitely heard right the first time.
“His wife is living in Fairfax. Owns a flower shop. They got married two years ago. I couldn’t find any court files for a divorce, but maybe they’re separated?”
“Separated doesn’t make it any better. He’s married, and he never told me. God, I feel sick.” Kelsi covered her mouth with her hand, worried the coffee was about to make a reappearance.
“I’m sorry, K. I didn’t want to tell you after whatever happened last night, but I also didn’t want you to go any longer without knowing.”
“No, you were right to tell me. Thank you.” She reached over and squeezed Abby’s arm in a quick gesture. “Seriously, though. What else could go wrong in my life this year?”
“Maybe it can only go up from here?” Abby asked, an awkward smile on her face as she tried to lighten the heavy mood in the kitchen.
“Let’s hope.” Kelsi drained the rest of her cup. “I’m gonna head upstairs for a bit. I just—I need to be alone right now.”
* * *
Thirty minutes later, Kelsi was sitting in her loft, staring across the creek at Dylan’s house.
Now that she knew it was his, the view looked entirely different.
She desperately wanted to know what he was doing at that moment, but at the same time wanted to forget him entirely.
It hurt too much to think about him in the wake of him leaving her, once again, after giving her a glimpse of happiness.
It was her fault that he left her. She drove everyone she loved away.
She couldn’t think of him any longer, so she let her anger at Sheridan push Dylan from her mind for a bit. Grabbing her phone, she pulled up her text thread with Sheridan and sent a message before she could think it through.
Kelsi: Are you seriously married??
Immediately her phone rang with an incoming call from him. She accepted and raised the phone to her ear. “Don’t even think about lying to me right now. Are you married?”
He hesitated for a long moment. “Yes, I am, but how did you find out?”
“That’s your first concern? How I found out that you’re a lying cheat?
No.” She cut his frantic pleas off as he tried to interrupt her.
“Sheridan, you knew that my ex cheated on me. How in any world did you think I’d be okay being the other woman?
Seriously, what the actual fuck were you thinking?
Does she even know that you’re running around on her in Oyster Shoals? ”
“Kelsi, please, let me explain.”
She heard the desperation in his voice, but she was past it. There was no excuse for his behavior, nor what he had made her into. She’d been planning to delegate him to the bench in the friend zone, but she didn’t want to have him on the roster in any capacity now.
“No, I’m done. Lose my number, and you bet I’m going to reach out to your wife to let her know.” She jammed her finger down on the screen, cutting off his weak excuses, and grabbed a pillow from the chair behind her to scream into.
“Feel any better?”
Abby’s voice came from behind the doorway, startling her, so she dropped the pillow, now giving an audible screech.
Abby flinched and covered her ears reflexively. “Damn, Kelsi. Give a girl a warning next time you go full banshee.”
“Give me a warning next time you sneak up on me!”
“Ahh, but that would defeat the whole purpose of sneaking, wouldn’t it?” Abby laughed at her own joke.
“I’m going to assume you overheard that whole thing?”
“Yeah.” Abby didn’t look ashamed in the slightest at having admitted to eavesdropping. Nosy PI. “Wanna talk about it?”
“No. I want to forget about all of it for a while.”
“Well, it’s a good thing we’re heading back to Virginia Beach today, isn’t it?”
Kelsi cast a last look out the window to Dylan’s house before standing. “Yeah, it is.”
It really wasn’t, though. Heading back to Virginia Beach meant seeing Tom and her old coworkers, dealing with the trial and the culmination of the threats, and Dylan.
No, heading back to Virginia Beach was not sounding like a good thing at all.