by Devney Perry
We passed the hours of the day exploring each other’s bodies. When Aria called, I told her I would just see her tomorrow. Cash and I ordered room service and ate naked in bed. And only when the sunlight had faded to moonlight through the window did we settle in to sleep. And to speak.
“I don’t think we should tell anyone about this,” I said. We were facing each other, our hands joined between us. “When we get home.”
He stared into my eyes and kissed one of my knuckles.
I waited, wondering what was going on in his head but he didn’t speak. “Cash.”
Silence.
“Say something,” I whispered.
“Tomorrow.” He tucked a strand of hair away from my face. Then he closed his eyes and drifted to sleep.
Tomorrow.
Tomorrow, he’d say his goodbye.
The morning sun was barely above the horizon when I snuck out of the hotel the next morning. Once again, I took the coward’s way out. Because I couldn’t say goodbye. Not yet.
So I left him a note.
See you in Montana.
Chapter Twelve
Cash
“Could this elevator be any fucking slower?” I muttered. “I hate this hotel.”
The couple standing beside me shared a look that I caught in the reflection from the polished silver walls.
I ignored them and growled. Was this how horses felt when you trapped them in their stalls? Itching and uncomfortable and desperate for freedom?
My molars ground together, the grating sound filling the car, until the light bar finally illuminated the number one. The doors slid open and though I wanted out, I waved a hand for the couple to exit first. They skittered away.
I marched from the elevator, scanning the lobby for Katherine. The note she’d left me this morning was crumpled so tight I could use it as a golf ball.
When my hand had stretched for hers this morning, I’d found stiff paper and cold cotton sheets instead of warm skin, and I was goddamn tired of searching for her in this place.
She didn’t do this at home. She didn’t disappear the moment I looked away. I found her at the office more often than not, but that was for work. She’d never avoided me so much.
Had she?
There was no sign of Kat in the lobby so I walked to the deck. She wasn’t standing against the railing or sitting in one of the seats. A few people were out this morning on the beach, but none with her petite frame and dark hair.
I turned and strode through the lobby, heading for the front desk to page Aria. It was too early for shops to be open downtown and my guess was Kat was with Aria again.
“Good morning, sir,” the man behind the counter greeted as I approached. “What can I help you with?”
“I’m—” A flash of a familiar smile caught the corner of my eye and I changed direction, walking away from the man and across the lobby for the hotel’s café.
There she was. My beautiful, infuriating best friend and lover was seated at a small table across from the motherfucker who’d offered her a job yesterday.
My bootsteps echoed on the marble floor as I stormed into the café, bypassing the hostess, who had the good sense to give me a wide berth.
Katherine was laughing, covering her mouth with a napkin as she chewed. There was a half-eaten croissant on a plate beside a mug of black coffee.
Mark Gallaway was relaxed in his chair, his legs crossed. “I can’t believe you’ve never seen that movie.”
Katherine shook her head, dropping her napkin and opening her mouth to respond when she caught me from the corner of her eye. Her smile fell. “H-hey.”
I didn’t bother with pleasantries. “Let’s go.”
A flush crept up her cheeks as her eyes darted between Mark and me. “I’ll meet you in the room soon.”
“Let’s. Go,” I repeated, doing my best to hold my temper in check. It was rare that I got this mad, but goddamn this woman, she was pushing me to every edge on the emotional cliff this week. “Now.”
Kat arched an eyebrow. “I’m busy now.”
Mark stared at me with a smug grin on his face, not bothering to hide it as he sipped his own coffee.
I stood tall and crossed my arms over my chest. “We can talk in private or we can talk right here. Doesn’t matter to me. But we are talking.”
Katherine held my gaze, her eyes narrowing. She knew me well and she knew I sure as fuck wasn’t bluffing. “Five minutes.”
“I’ll wait.”
“Fine,” she huffed, dismissing me with a glare as she put on a smile for Mark. It wasn’t her real smile. It was the polite and placating one she used for guests. “I’m so sorry, Mark. Will you excuse me?”
“No problem.” He smiled at her. “You have my card.”
“Yes.” She reached for her purse hanging from the back of her chair and retrieved her wallet.
Mark waved it off. “On me. Please. I’ve enjoyed talking with you this morning. I hope to hear from you again soon.”
Oh, fuck this guy. I dug for my own wallet in my jeans pocket, taking a crisp one-hundred-dollar bill from the fold and slapping it on the table. Then I jerked my chin toward the door.
Kat gave Mark an awkward smile as she stood, but the second her gaze landed on me, it was full of fire and venom.
She took my elbow and shoved me away from the table. I’d worn a T-shirt today rather than my normal button-up and her fingernails dug into my skin. “You’re a child.”
“No, I’m fucking pissed.” I ripped my arm free of her grip, then clasped her hand and marched us toward the elevator.
“It couldn’t wait five minutes?”
“No.”
The elevator was empty as she stepped inside, yanking her hand free from mine to punch the button for our floor. Then she crossed her arms over her chest and shook her head. “That was embarrassing, Cash.”
“So was waking up alone after last night.”
Hadn’t that been special? Hadn’t I treated her like the treasure she was? Hadn’t I promised we’d talk tomorrow?
Damn it, I had a lot to say. The words clogged my throat, scratching and pleading to be set free. But this was not something I wanted to do in public.
An elevator was not the place to tell your best friend that you were in love with her.
I’d known it yesterday, sitting beside her on the beach. Maybe I’d known it the day I’d first seen her at the ranch all those years ago.
I was in love with Kat.
Any other woman and I probably would have blurted it out last night, but she wasn’t any woman. This was Kat. And to say those words, to take this leap, was risking our friendship. And it was risking her happiness.
I was a Greer. I’d always be a Greer. And if this thing between us didn’t work out, she’d lose more than a boyfriend. She’d lose a mother, a father. Grandparents and a brother. Her job. Her house.
If Katherine didn’t want to explore this thing, I knew, deep down, that eventually she’d leave Montana.
Maybe she’d already made that decision.
Maybe she didn’t feel the same way.
Maybe I was twelve years too late.
We needed to go home. We needed to get on familiar ground and talk this through. If she thought I was leaving without her, she was insane. No way I’d leave her with all the shit we’d gone through this week. No way I’d leave her with vultures like Mark Gallaway circling.
“Did he offer you a job again?” I asked.
“Yes.”
Son of a bitch. “And?”
“And what? We had this conversation last night. I’m just exploring options. Not all of us are content to settle for the same old thing.”
“Settle.” I scoffed. Her claws were coming out. “That’s what you think.”
“Yes.” The elevator dinged and she flew past me, stomping down the hallway in her flip-flops to the room. She slid the key into the slot and turned the handle. I planted my hand in the door, pushing it with too much force. It sl
ammed against the rubber stop with a bang before slamming closed behind me as I followed her into the room.
She was ready for the face-off. She stood in front of the TV with her arms crossed. My heart jumped into my throat. When Kat entered a battle, she usually walked away the victor.
Not this time. I wanted us both to win.
“I love my job,” I said. Before we covered anything else, I wanted to clear the air. “All I’ve ever wanted to do was be a cowboy. That’s not me settling, that’s me understanding reality. I’m the second son, Kat. My entire life, my father has been grooming Easton to take over the ranch. And I’m okay with that. I don’t need to be in charge everywhere because when I am in charge, they respect that. When one of them needs help with a horse, they come to me. The rest . . . it was never meant for me.”
“Doesn’t that bother you?”
“No.” I sighed. “Why does it bother you?”
“Because it’s not fair.” She threw her hands in the air. “You deserve all of it. You deserve the chance to choose the job you want.”
I really did love her. She was standing here, furious on my behalf, when there wasn’t anything to be furious about. I stepped closer. “I did choose. I am exactly where I want to be in my life. I don’t want or need it to change.”
A flash of pain crossed her gaze. “Right. Well, I don’t feel the same. Mark—”
“Screw Mark.” My rage returned with a vengeance at his name. I spun around and walked to the closet, yanking out her suitcase. Then I brought it back and threw it on the bed. “Pack. We’re going home.”
This trip was a disaster and though I wanted to talk to Kat about the future, I sure as hell wasn’t doing it when we were at each other’s throats.
“I’m not ready to leave.” She jutted out her chin.
“We’re leaving.”
“I don’t take orders from you, Cash.”
“Yeah? That’s not how it went last night.” I’d ordered her to come and she’d done it on my command.
Her lip curled. “You’re an asshole.”
“Maybe. But I’m not the one turning away from their family without giving them a fighting chance. They deserve an explanation. If you leave like this, if you just don’t come back, it will crush them. Grandma. Gemma. Mom. My mother loves you like her own.”
“But I’m not her own!” Katherine’s shout made me flinch. “She’s not my mother. And do you know how painful it is to wish so badly it were true? To wish I could claim her?”
“No.” I threw my arms in the air. “Because you don’t talk to me. I’ve learned more about your past on this trip than I have in twelve years. Why?”
“I don’t like to talk about my childhood.”
“Even with me?” I pointed to my chest.
“Especially with you.”
Fuck. Her words slashed me to the core. If she didn’t trust me with her past, there was no way she’d trust me with the future.
“If you want to stay, then stay.” I turned from her and strode for the door. I’d take a page from her playbook this morning and hit the beach to think. Get some air. Then I was finding an airport and getting the hell back to Montana where I belonged.
My hand gripped the door’s handle just as a pair of dainty fingers touched my elbow.
“It’s dirty,” she whispered to my back. “It’s grimy. And I hate the idea that you, of all people, might see me differently.”
I turned and stared down at Kat. Her gaze was on the floor so I hooked my finger under her chin and tipped it up until I got those blue eyes. “No matter what you say, no matter where you came from, you’ll always be my Kat.”
Her eyes turned glassy.
The sight of unshed tears, the struggle in her eyes was nearly too much to take. I wrapped my arms around her. “Talk to me. Please. I want to understand.”
“It hurts.”
“Because you’re keeping it all inside. This isn’t a burden you have to carry alone.” I didn’t care that I already knew the truth. I just wanted her to confide in me. To trust me.
And maybe once she did, I’d tell her my secret. We’d rip the past wide open so that we actually had a chance to start fresh.
Katherine nodded against my chest, then stepped free, retreating to the bed. She plopped on the end, her short legs dangling above the carpet.
I sat by her side, taking her hand in mine and lacing our fingers together.
“My mother was tall,” she said. “When I was a little girl, I used to look up at her and wonder if I’d be tall too. I was tiny, always the short kid in school. They’d put me in the front row in every class photo because the other kids stood head and shoulders above me. I hated it. I just wanted to be tall.”
“Like your mom.” When I was a kid, I’d wanted to be strong like my dad.
“No, not like my mom. I didn’t want to be like my mom. I just wanted to be tall.”
Kat sat motionless, unblinking as she stared at the floor. The air conditioner kicked on, but it did nothing to suppress the thick air.
“The tall kids didn’t get picked on,” Kat said finally. “Their mothers didn’t call them Runt. I was five when I learned that my name was Katherine. Five. She had to enroll me in school and when she told the secretary my full name, I remember thinking, Who is Katherine Gates? Until then, I’d always thought my name was Runt. That’s what she called me. That’s how she introduced me to others.”
“What the fuck?” I stared down at her, my mouth hanging open. “She didn’t call you by your name?”
Kat shook her head. “No.”
“Had she meant it like . . . an endearment?”
“No.”
My stomach clenched. How could a mother name her child and then not use that name?
“She didn’t want me. To this day, I don’t know why she kept me. Maybe to be her punching bag.”
My heart stopped. “She hit you?”
“Pinched. Slapped. The occasional kick. I think my life would have been easier if I bruised easily.”
“But you’ve got the toughest skin on the planet.”
How many times had I teased her about it? The woman would run her shins into the coffee table and other than a slight red mark immediately afterward, she didn’t bruise. The only time I’d seen her black and blue was when we’d been playing baseball for fun and she’d caught a ball with her eye instead of her hand. Even then, it had healed in a couple of days without a trace.
“What about your father?” Kat hadn’t spoken of him, though I’d known she’d run away from her mother’s home.
“I don’t know who he is. Probably one of my mother’s meth-head friends.”
“Meth.”
Kat nodded. “Mom’s drug of choice during my teenage years. I didn’t care because when she was using, she’d disappear for days on end. It was when she’d come home that things were bad.”
“I don’t . . .” Christ, I wanted to hold her. “I’m sorry.”
“We never had money. If not for school food, I would have starved. She spent everything. Stole whatever I managed to scrape together, no matter where I hid it.”
Which had led her to the sidewalk, where she’d sat and begged for money to buy some fucking shoes. My insides twisted into a knot. I hated this for her. I hated that she’d had to endure so much strife.
“After I met Karson and followed him to the junkyard, I went home. There were some kids at my high school in foster care and I didn’t want to go through that, bouncing from place to place. The junkyard sounded fun so I spent a week slowly packing. Trying to make it inconspicuous. Then I waited for Mom to disappear. It took a week, but she left and I was ready. I figured I’d be long gone by the time she showed up again. But she only left for an hour. She came home and caught me three steps away from the door, carrying a garbage bag and a backpack.” Kat’s hand drifted to her eyebrow, to the small scar barely visible between the dark hairs.
I’d asked her once how she’d gotten that scar. “You didn’t get
that from running into a shelf, did you?”
“It was a shelf. I didn’t run into it though. She pushed me and I fell. For a woman who constantly spoke about getting rid of me, she really hadn’t liked that I was leaving. She flew into a rage and locked me inside my room. The window in my bedroom had been boarded up for years. I couldn’t get the door open. She locked me up and left for a week. If not for the bottles of water and the loaf of bread that I’d already put in that backpack to take with me to the junkyard, I would have probably died.”
“Kat—”
“I had to pee in the corner of my closet.” Her jaw tensed, her eyes narrowing. “I hope it smelled for years after I left. I hope she had one sober day when she realized what she put me through.”
I gulped. “How’d you get out?”
“One of her drug dealers came over because she owed him money. He opened my door, thinking she was locked inside. He took one look at me and decided I’d be payment enough.”
“No.” My stomach pitched. “He didn’t—”
“I was so weak. So hungry. I wouldn’t have been able to fight him off. But he got close enough, smelled the urine and decided a punch to the face was good enough. I blacked out and when I woke up, he was gone. He’d left the door open so I cleaned myself up, grabbed my bag of clothes and left. You know the rest.”
“Kat, I’m sorry.” My voice was hard to use past the lump in my throat. I clutched her hand to my heart and dropped a kiss to her knuckles. “I’m so, so sorry.”
“It’s okay,” she whispered. There was a numbness to her voice. A robotic tone that I hadn’t heard before. “I found my way out.”
For a lot of years, I’d felt guilty about what I’d done to her mother. Maybe Kat would hate me for keeping this secret, but knowing this, how her mother had treated her . . .
The guilt was gone.
“Thank you for telling me.” I clutched her hand, binding her to me so she couldn’t flee. “Now I have to tell you something.”
“About what?”
I met her blue eyes. “About your mother.”
Chapter Thirteen
