CHAPTER 25 KAYLEE
“She’s staying here?” Jack roars as he walks into the family room where I’m lying on the lounger chair and Kate is sitting a few seats away. We’re indulging in some trashy television that my brother just interrupted. “Why?”
Kate hits the pause button so we don’t miss any of our show. “Keep your voice down,” she hisses. “Because she used to be my best friend and we have so much space here and I feel bad for her.”
“After what she did to us, you should not feel bad that she ended up where she did,” Jack says. He sits beside Kate and tosses an arm around her shoulders. “I sure as fuck don’t.”
“Remind me what she did again?” I say.
“She betrayed Kate,” Jack says, decidedly not keeping his voice down. “They were best friends and all it took was a little money for her to blab all the things Kate had told her in strict confidence. She broke every friendship code and I don’t trust her for a second.”
I glance at Kate, who looks a little perturbed by Jack’s description. “So why’d she show up here?”
“She has nowhere else to go,” Kate says flatly.
“What about all the money Savannah and Michelle paid to get her story?” Jack asks. “She couldn’t use some of that to find another place?”
“She said she and Kevin used the majority of it as a down payment on a house. They just moved in but she couldn’t take the fighting anymore so she filed for divorce. Tonight he decided to invite all his friends over and be an obnoxiously loud asshole.” She turns toward Jack. “Including Vince.”
Jack snarls. “I hate that motherfucker.”
“Is that the guy you punched?” I ask.
Jack nods as Kate leans into him. “I know,” she says. “I do, too. But listen, this is just for one night. Maybe two. She just needed a night away. She’ll go back home tomorrow, pack her things, and find a place to stay that isn’t here.”
“And you’re okay with just letting her stay here,” Jack says flatly.
Kate shakes her head. “No, I’m not. But it’s not like she’s dangerous, and I have a heart. I can’t just turn her away when she’s at rock bottom.”
“Even after what she did?” he presses.
Kate sighs. “I know you don’t understand, but look where we are now.
” She holds up her hands to indicate everything around us—the house, the warmth, the love.
“Michelle is out of our lives…for now at least. Savannah slithered off to make Tristan miserable. We won, Jack. At the time it was horrific, but now, all these months later…” she trails off and shrugs.
“It doesn’t matter that we were blackmailed because of Shannon.
We ended up with everything, and I can’t just turn a person away when they’ve ended up with nothing. ”
“There has to be someone else she can stay with,” Jack says. “Another friend? Family?”
Kate shakes her head. “Nobody knows she filed for divorce yet. I think she’s just not ready to face the reality of it.
She’s embarrassed it didn’t work out after she married the guy she thought was her soulmate.
She’s sad and angry. Make no mistake, I will never trust her again, and we’ll never be as close as we once were, and you can be sure as hell I’m not telling her any of my secrets, but that doesn’t mean we can’t give her a quiet place to sleep for the night. ”
Jack narrows his eyes at her. “What secrets? You have secrets?”
She shrugs with a gleam in her eye. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”
Jack leans over and gets close to her face. “Do I need to seduce them out of you?”
She giggles.
“Oh God, you two,” I mutter as I leap up off the couch. “I’m going to bed.”
“Thank God,” Jack says, and I scamper up the stairs before I have to hear him seduce Kate on their couch…and he will do it and give zero fucks whether I’m on the couch beside them.
Kate might try to have some courtesy, but he won’t.
It’s their house, though. They should be able to do it on the couch if the mood strikes.
As I walk into my room, first I glance at the spot where Ben had me shoved up against the wall as his fingers jammed into me over and over. I close the door and lean on it as I remember the way his hand grabbed onto my throat as he kissed me.
That was so damn hot.
God, I want him.
And then my eyes fall onto the boxes in my room—the ones I packed as I looked ahead to moving into my own apartment…a place where not only could I give Jack and Kate the alone time they deserve, but where I’d have some of my own, too.
And now I’m stuck. Again.
I finally got up the courage to strike out on my own only to be shut down by a goddamn scam.
I guess it just wasn’t meant to be, and maybe it’s time I rely on my belief in fate a little more rather than sitting around being upset that it didn’t work out.
That’s what’s helped me get through all the hard times in my life, whether it was a break-up or losing my father or leaving my friends behind in Michigan when I moved here to Vegas.
As hard as those events were, knowing that fate had a reason for making them happen was a comfort, and once I discovered that reason, life changed.
Like when we lost Dad—it was in losing him that those of us still here finally learned to forgive one another, and now our family is closer than ever because we all saw firsthand how short life can be.
I wish it hadn’t taken a tragedy for us to learn that, but it seems a lot of life’s hardest lessons are born from tragedy.
That strong belief in fate just hasn’t steered me wrong so far, and so I will continue to trust in it.